Authors /
Shari Wagner
The farm wife collects frequent flyer miles
I find my seat
on a gray plank and grasp
stout rope tied
to a sycamore branch. Leaning
back, I pump
till I’m lifting off over barbed wire,
dusty beans,...
The farm wife looks up at the cosmos
When it’s too nice to nap indoors, I take an old knotted comforter to the back edge of the garden, near tomato leaves I crush for a last whiff of summer. Crickets chorus ...
The farm wife hoists the family flag
Eve got off the bus in tears the day her third grade teacherscolded her for using a hankie. “It’s not sanitary,” she said.Miss Pauley had no notion of what a handkerchief means to us:...
The farm wife muses upon her Miracle Tree
Everyone laughedwhen it arrived in a legal-sizedenvelope and I showed themthe ad: “For 19.99, watch itreach your roofline in a year.”Just as that stick, plain...
The farm wife repeats a lullaby
When Ruth cries out, terrifiedby what stalks the root cellaror chases her toward a cliff,we sing our favorite chorus:Vegetables grow in my garden,...
The farm wife examines her Mennonite roots
They’re the riddle in my garden What has eyes but cannot see?Like a stone, they fit my hand...
The farm wife eats out at Marner’s Six Mile Café
Widowed farmers cram the tablenear the peanut butter pies,
but I prefer the back boothbeneath a pike framed with flowers....
The farm wife finds her necklace in the junk drawer
That’s what’s left of it— six safety pinsfrom a chain I once wore beneath my dress to Saylor’s...
Creek-song
It begins in a cow lane with bees and white clover, courses along corn, picks up tempo against rocks. It rises to a teetering pitch as I ...
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Creek-side prayer
By the rusty bridge-railover a creek where red-wingedblackbirds congregated on cattails,my grandfather cut the engineevery Sunday morning...