Thirsty

Their first real fight caught Charlie

at a low spot tractor broken down

just with the wheat coming on

golden heads nodding in the sun

no room time money for anything

but this toothless gear to mend

when Evaleen had most need of him

with her firstborn just starting to show

he loaded up sold half the pigs

they were fattening for the fall

counting on said not one word

until there was the check in his hand

to squander on tractor parts

the deed done an announcement

she met with an absolute silence

which meant he slept in the hayloft

took a couple days quiet thinking how

to lift the whole thing on his shoulders

carry on like he knew best

somehow with or without her

ignore her while she simmered down

forgetting how good she could be

figuring things close which only meant

his first mistake he compounded

so there they were both broken down

stuck in the road where life went

silent in slow motion on around them

untouched untasted all but meaningless

each put-upon staggered like a young

mule overburdened scared to take a step

then he recalled how folks used to say

looks like you threw both your

bucket and rope down the well

better hope you don’t never get thirsty

which to look at her he surely did

so drug out his heart’s longest ladder

in the cobwebby dark after supper

got set to climb down that hole

sundown on the porch apologize

down on his knees like he meant it

purely ask her forgiveness and vow

from now on to forever ask her first

Paul Hunter

Paul Hunter is a Seattle poet who has won the Washington State Book Award for his farming poems, and is currently working on a series of contemporary cowboy novels that wrestle with how we might savor nature more fully and accommodate ourselves to climate change. The first cowhand book won a Will Rogers Medallion. His last book was  Untaming the Valley, and the next to appear soon in 2025 is Desert Crossing. “Thirsty” is from a book of comic poems about a farming couple, Charlie and Evaleen, that is titled Starry Dark Farm Romance.