Sonnet Among the Almond Trees
Half-standing on the tractor, half-sitting in Justin’s lap,
I weave left, right, duck down to avoid a face of pink-
blossomed branches. His hand reaches across my back,
steadies me, and I am expansive, just on the brink
of becoming the figurehead of a John Deere.
I’m losing her, he says. You have to help me steer,
and I do, but the tractor lurches to the right with a groan,
then stops. We laugh, our voices merging with the drone
of forty bee hives at farm’s edge. Undeterred, we gun it hard,
put it in second and rush forward like the flock
of chickens we chased yesterday in the yard.
Marriage is like this: a fruitful machine, sudden starts and stops,
and always the knowledge that somewhere your father
knows what you are doing and disapproves.
I weave left, right, duck down to avoid a face of pink-
blossomed branches. His hand reaches across my back,
steadies me, and I am expansive, just on the brink
of becoming the figurehead of a John Deere.
I’m losing her, he says. You have to help me steer,
and I do, but the tractor lurches to the right with a groan,
then stops. We laugh, our voices merging with the drone
of forty bee hives at farm’s edge. Undeterred, we gun it hard,
put it in second and rush forward like the flock
of chickens we chased yesterday in the yard.
Marriage is like this: a fruitful machine, sudden starts and stops,
and always the knowledge that somewhere your father
knows what you are doing and disapproves.
“Sonnet Among the Almond Trees” originally appeared in Indiana Review and has been reprinted here with permission of the author.
Dana Koster was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a 2012 recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Indiana Review, PN Review, The Cincinnati Review and EPOCH, among others. She lives in California’s Central Valley with her husband and young son.
