from Green Mountain Idyl by Hayden Carruth

I’d mulch your strawberries & cultivate

            your potato patch

all summer long

            & then in winter

come thirty below & the steel-busting weather

            I’d tune your distributor & adjust

your carburetor

            if me & you was together

be it sunshine be it gloom

            summer or the mean mud season

honey I’d kiss you

            every morningtime

& evenings I’d hurry

            to get shut of the barn chores early

& then in the dark of the night

            I’d stand at the top of the stairs & hold the light

for you                        for you

           if you’d sleep in my room