Love On Earth
By Victoria Boynton

Your face is still as you unlock trouble

with mowers, pump,

Roto-tiller. Your fingers on bolts,

levers, me

knowing what we were designed for.

I love to move with

your tractor motion. Your beat Redwings

earth stained wait

next to the bed, crumbs of dirt ground

into your hands.

You’ve turned brown in the sun.

There’s a whiff of buck.

You wait for me to rain down on you.

You, a rock against

whom I break. When we’re done

rhubarb tightens

its red fist and the knot of last year’s chard unfurls

an unlikely green.

You’ve shouldered your shovel. You look good

with a shovel.

Though the morning is gone, the eastern sun’s in

your beard as you pause

at the woods, a creature of stone. In fact, it seems

you must have come

from under the ground—that you are a man who can stop

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