After Wendell Berry

Last night a thought floated through me: maybe
marriage is an inherently unhappy country.
I knew it, immediately, as an unfair thought,
and selfish. A sort of not-thought. I remembered

dear Wendell spent a whole book on the country
of marriage, the barriers we create, anticipate.
Country as not the shared hallucination of state.
Country as in contra – against. Opposite.
As in, this land lying opposite to us. On the other
side of the mattress. Their wild and yonder blue;
Bragg singing Guthrie:    way over yonder in the minor key.

As in the fields that oppose the farmer’s hands and plough.
Like my young squash chewed to ablation by flea beetles
with their own hungry agendas. God’s first reprimand.

I picture the circle of my own body and around that
the circle of us; the broken circle of born family,
the righteous circle of our chosen ones. I think
of the living sculpture I saw in a forest:

branches soaked and bent into arches,
which form a giant nest. How dark and safe
it was. How you could see through the cracks.

What it means to compromise. And to trust. How
did it take me so long to realize I didn’t understand
either notion well. A learning curve; the way a branch
has to soften, to take on water, in order to bend

without snapping. Learning the curve of his brow,
his gentle shoulder. Yes, I feel it. The way resolution
adds another layer of protection around us.

Everything we’ve brought to the nest, and hold up to the light:
our ragged feathers. Our stolen baubles, which flash and delight.