Nobody knew we were in there, hidden
in the hay, the hot choking dustcolliding then subsiding in the beams
of sunlight through the barn walls,the rough door chain-locked, the hay
broken and scattered belowthe small window we’d squeezed through,
Quick, quick, in case someone saw.We’d climb the rough ladder to the loft
to jump into the hay, again, again,and then we’d lie hidden, whispering
what would happen to our lives, the boyswhose tongues would find us, the nights
we’d steal from sleep to come hereto meet them, sliding in through the dark
to the hay’s wide bed. Nothinglike that ever happened. But say it did.
Say the sweet nights came, we married rightout of school and stayed there all our lives.
The orchard would still have been sold,the barn torn down, the subdivision built—
the longing still with us, all the same.