Terms

This night we’re drinking beer a pint
at a time, from Ball jars made in Muncie

where my wife and father were born. We’re
doing this for no better reason, I think,

than to drink more and drink faster. Nostalgia
plays no part. The evening is coming on,

the low, wide prairie sky has begun to grey
in the fashion that sunsets take in here

when there’s 90% humidity and no wind to urge
it elsewhere. No moon yet either, nothing

but the lazy twinkle of a star here and there
and the flashing red elegance of a light

atop the grain elevator. Somewhere beneath it
Varney sits on a three-legged stool with a flashlight

in his hands and a thermos of spiked coffee.
He’s waiting for Linda to arrive, no doubt,

so they can move inside where the scales are read,
inside each other’s baggy jeans and body, maybe

inside each other’s soul. Each Tuesday before Linda
goes out, she wheels her husband to the bedroom,

turns on the television, and kisses him goodbye.
He’s memorized this ceremony of the Purple Heart,

knows it as well as any Veterans’ Day Parade
he’s learned to sit through. Outside his window

and ours, too, a diaphanous fog has risen from the beans,
tempting us to name it good or bad, angel or serpent.

Our black dog pauses in mid-field, surveying
the contour and design of the yellow flashes

that might be earth-bound stars, but are really just
fireflies blinking off and on. The males go high

and the females low while they signal their species,
their need, their readiness. All this is true,

but I lied to you earlier. We’re drinking
like this because we want a child and we can’t

have one. “These things happen,” the doctor said,
“These things you have to live with.” Most nights

it’s easy to feel inadequate, slightly broken,
thinking of the good or even the bad parent

you’ll never have the chance to be. Honestly,
we’re a little tiresome in our own despair,

which, after all, is not the despair of Varney
when Linda doesn’t arrive, or Linda’s that she’s

not gotten her period, or anything like
that of her husband, who can’t lie there

beside her without wanting to touch her
in a way that more than his mind can feel.