PLEASE, SIR

A full day’s travel later

Zahra sinks into a hayloft

and she is gone to a land

I hope is more peaceful

than the one I visit

in my own dreams.

Sleep will not come for me

but the farmer will. I do not

block out Zahra’s snores

the animal smells, my racing mind.

I pick hay from my stockings

and wait.

Dependable as the goats

that must endure his rough hands

every morning, the farmer appears

silhouetted by the moon.

He scans the barn and

doesn’t see us in the corner

where he said we could stay.

Finally he spots me leaning

over the edge of the hayloft.

I’m in no mood to hide.

He limps to the base of a ladder

in no condition to climb.

What you doing up there?

I smile at his frustration.

A girlish whim.

He retreats

to his safe, warm house,

no word of why

he came to the barn

in the dead of night.

We both know why.