Nights, I hear barn owls calling,
shrill as hunger stripped bare—
and think of the onion farmer
from east of the mountains, his broad,
exhausted body on my massage table,
the owl he told me screamed
all winter from his barn rafters.
He said the sound made the cold
colder when he trudged
from field to barn to house.
After I touched all the places
I was licensed to—bunched,
tender shoulders that crept
toward his ears; beat-up hands,
leathery as a dog’s paw pads;
each buttock’s lonely
hillock giving gently
beneath my forearm’s strokes—
he sat up and asked
if I’d have sex with him.
He promised not to hurt me,
to buy me dinner after.
He said it plain, did not look away.
But I was twenty and knew nothing
of desolation, or owls,
or wintering-over onions,
or of a farmer pacing ugly acres,
as layer upon layer of stinging,
weeping sweetness form
beneath the frozen-solid ground.
first published in Flycatcher