WEBVTT

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Amaryllis,

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Having been a
farmer's daughter, she

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didn't want to be
a farmer's wife,

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didn't want the smell of ripe
manure in all his clothes,

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the corresponding
floors in her kitchen,

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a pail of slop below the
sink, a crate of baby

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chicks beside the stove, piping
beneath their bare light bulb,

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cows calling at the
gate for him to come,

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cows standing in the
chute as he crops

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their horns with his
long sharp shears.

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So she nagged him
toward a job in town,

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so she sprang from the
table weeping when he swore,

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so after supper she
sulks over her mending

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as he unfolds his
pearl pocket knife

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to trim a callus on his palm.

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Too much like her
mother, he says,

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not knowing any other reason
why she spoils the children,

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or why he comes in from the
combine with his wrenches

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to find potatoes boiled
dry in their pot,

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his wife in the parlor on
the bench at her piano,

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not playing you
understand, just sitting

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like a fern in that formal room.

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So much time to think,
these long hours.

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Like her mother,
each night she goes

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to bed when her husband's
tired, gets up when he gets up,

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and in between
tries not to move,

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listening to the sleep
of this good man who

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lies beside and over her.

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So much time alone,
since everything

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he knows is practical.

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Just this morning
he plunged an ice

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pick into the bloated
side of the cow

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unable to rise, dying where
it fell, its several stomachs

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having failed--

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too full, he said,
of sweet wet clover.

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