Rural Erotica

It’s October
and fields call out, pull us along
with long drawn mouths, edges
blown and quiet
wooly trees gathered up
into windbreak villages.
Under cedar’s lace,
I measure your angles
with the keen of my canines, name
the switchback of hips like roads
and count rings on a wooden wrist,
my thumbnail pressed
to its current.
I love the way a farmer loves
the fields, using the heels of my hands
to plough a straight line
from sternum to Eden,
curving over ribs to stand
on the small of your back.
Fingers rake through mustard grass,
following the rise of vertebrae
to lick at the marrow there.
Sun dogs howl,
as you and I eat our fill:
clover, slippery elm,
the last of the bright choke cherry.
There is a bite of thread, snare
of frost in morning dark, and cut
of longtooth light.
But you hustle those tears,
wear them on the swallow
of your throat
and make me wild with salt
when you bare it.