Roxie Hides in Amish Country with Phoebe, Yippee and a Bottle of Black Ink

Knowing she could no longer
make fiction fact
or lose herself in eyes
that cannot see,
Roxie found refuge from those
men whose words always
infuriated her or turned her on
by settling in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania.

Though not allowed to move
directly into the Amish settlement,
Roxie rented a house
close enough to the entrance
that by wearing black frocks
and hiding her hair in a white kerchief,
she could mingle without
causing undue concern.

As she grew comfortable,
she began to write of boys in
battered straw hats, canned fruit
and forked hay.
She learned to listen
and watched Phoebe grow
along side the newly planted garden.

She loved the stories of the dark barns
with canopies of tobacco leaves
hanging in their furthest recesses,
as they reminded her of herself
curing in the hidden
sanctuary of simplicity.

She wore no watch,
lived the slow time
of the farmers,
baked schnitz pies,
made crab-apple jelly
and studied the men folk.

She built a martin house
that had seven apartments and
a penthouse on the top level
from a kit she had ordered.
She hoped for the happiness
the Amish believe the martins bring.

She made a quilt
but did not send it to
Romania.
She kept it,
a constant reminder
that lives can be patch worked
into complete wholes.
Mid-June, she dons a pair of jean cut-offs
and a Grateful Dead t-shirt,
brings the laptop down from
the closet shelf,
buys Yippee a flea collar
and the baby a bright
yellow bonnet.

Roxie was healing.

Bobbie Kilzer Gogain