Genevieve Taggard, “To One Loved Wholly Within Wisdom”

Someone will reap you like a field,
Pile your gathered plunder,

Garner what you bring to yield,
Turn your beauty under;

In cruel usages, in such
Sickle-cutting, heaping;

Certain women toil too much,
Wearing of their reaping;

Someone else may winnow you;
Someone else may plunder;

I have cut too many new
Swathes, and broken under

Soil that should have fallow lain
To be greedy either

For the shattered stalk, the stain
Where the clusters wither.

Tim Miller