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,
six-foot corn, my legs stretched to spin
the rusty
rooster’s arrows. I reach for what I see and
what I don’t—
The wind in my face whispers, Esther, Esther.
Or is it you,
my heart, pumping as I pump that speaks? “I’m here,”
I say, like faithful
Samuel answered in the darkness. Leaning into the arms
of this world
that push me forward, I forget stiff arthritis and varicose veins.
I let go
of the back and forth of brooms and mops, sweepers and irons and just
rock
with the bliss a rocking chair rocks or a pendulum swinging from the sun.