In another life I’m a troubadour self-taught
on a lute I stripped from a plague-beaten body
at a crossroads. Out of a ditch his bare feet thrust up
small and pale, like onion bulbs plucked too soon.

That lute called to me the way a dropped plow
wouldn’t. Belly smooth like a plover’s,
strings taut as the hangman’s noose.
The neck trusts me, my arm. And you?

Your yarrow’s the best in the parish
for toothache, your primrose the cure for cramp.
Come August, stinking heat, the convent pleads
your sweetest flowers for the Virgin.

You’ve never cared for music, or the miller’s son,
or idle hours. Crushing last year’s angelica, already
you know you’ll tuck lavender into your linen,
you’ll mend willow baskets when the cow labors—

praise heaven no calf with two heads ever turned meat
for song this side of the river. They say
the priest refused to bless the mermaid babe,
motherless, before its scales melted into rain.

The sun’s a sore in the sky, ready to burst,
parching the road the color of unspun flax.
Night’s a lake I’ll never reach, but here’s
the shade of your barn, your hands at work—

I’ll fetch you a moon made of violets,
I sing, I’ll harvest a bushel of stars.
You tell me be gone, there’s nuns with alms,
for I’m naught but a beggar with a voice.