When I turn the corner, they are up
there. The Amish men are on the roof, cool
and collarless in shirts and braces, some
with beards and others without. Most bend
double wielding hammers high, their thudding
irregular against stone or woodwork: raps
skidding over each other. A few wear
straw hats; some hang from ladders:
others crouch at the edge. The path goes right
by the brink of the sounds and I try
not to look when I pass, though
they gaze on me with praise
or disdain. The hot breeze gusts
over Tudek, long grasses buzzing
at my bare legs, and the blows
of mallets pounding down on me.
Zoë Brigley Thompson, a native of Wales, is now Visiting Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. She has two poetry collections The Secret (2007) and Conquest (2012), and her third poetry collection, Hand and Skull, will be published in 2019. In the past six months, her poems have been accepted by Poetry Ireland Review, Orion, The Manhattan Review, Permafrost, and the Tahoma Literary Review.
More work by Zoë Brigley Thompson
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