The Affair

By David Baker b. 1954 David Baker

Then the long fencerow, that years ago had

heaved and buckled, took on a copper shine

in the sunset, the dew. A garlic haze

of cut pastures simmered fields away.

They were flushed from sex—they were

traced with that other body, just parted.

They stood in the length of first fall waiting.

And their skin, that had been so willing,

delible as ash to a trembling fingertip,

became its own again. One star, three.

Nothing good was going to happen. Night winds

lifted themselves out of wheat rows and shook

off what had been done. So they turned

elsewhere. Her fingers gathered up her collar

softly in a bunch, and she put on a scarf.

It was not even cold. It was only cool.

Source: The Truth about Small Towns (University of Arkansas Press, 1998)

Biography

Though he is known primarily as a poet of the Midwest, David Baker was born in Bangor, Maine in 1954. He spent his childhood in Missouri and attended Central Missouri State University before receiving his PhD from the University of Utah. He has won fellowships and awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Currently a Professor of English . . .

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