The chickens are just heading in
through their chicken-sized door
as I challenge spring in the car,
tires hugged in mud in the bend
where the fast-driving neighbor
does his fast-driving damages
of ruts in the road. I am not yet
thirty and wearing the remains
of red lipstick as I walk through
the door of my home. My man’s
on the floor with his toes to the sky
in a stretch and the teapot is still
breathing steam. Imagining other
couples is like imagining history:
I can’t do it at all without the help
of a movie. In the film of my days,
my man is healing himself
with patience and I am healing
my self with something like hope.
On a bad day I can’t even fight
off my rooster; on most days
I’m pocketing eggs with a song.

Taylor Mardis Katz is a poet and farmer living in central Vermont. With her husband, she runs Free Verse Farm & Apothecary, an herb farm with a poetry backbone. For the past four years, Taylor has worked as a poet for hire, writing poems for all occasions for strangers who find her on the internet. She also works as a marketing consultant for a variety of authors, farmers, and non-profits, and serves as co-editor of a monthly literary newsletter called Read Literately. (Photo by Misha M. Johnson)
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