It wasn’t the ring-necked pheasants strutting across
the yard, lumbering ground hogs or deer splayed bloody
next to every road that told me it was time
to leave. Sprawled on Hawk Mountain boulders
I counted kestrels above dry quilts of corn
spread next to brick hotels, general stores,
stone farm houses, red barns with hearts
and horses. I played ring toss in every country bar
lined with jars of pickled eggs and jerky, shopped
farmer’s market stalls tended by pink-cheeked
Amish girls in white aprons, hair pulled tight
and braided under capped buns. They sold
stacks of scrapple and cheese, apple butter, pretzels
and pig stomach while horse drawn wagons waited
for bearded men and black-brimmed boys to drive
them home to Paradise, Virginville, Intercourse, bed
sheets flapping in the manure rich air. Inside my thick-
walled house, beams stained with ox blood, tradition
echoed in red ware pottery, pierced tin cupboards,
blue and white crocks with stiff-necked plump Dutch
birds, but there were no women like me.
Lured down highways splattered with billboards,
past the sprawl of malls and smoke stacks, I searched
for them in bookstores and meetings, women
who lived in disguise, a man’s wife kissing another
man’s wife. Let me be clear about this yearning,
its embers stoked by more than a juicy bite,
more than feminist books devoured like bread,
more than the company of other mothers alone
at night, their men working late. Body
and mind yoked to this cultivated garden
of my own sowing, I chose wilderness.
When I packed up my babies to leave,
fear came too, but I was never kicked out.
