Leaving Paradise, 1980

By Gail Thomas

It wasn’t the ring-necked pheasants strutting across
the yard, lumbering ground hogs or deer splayed bloody 
next to every road that told me it was time

to leave. Sprawled on Hawk Mountain boulders
I counted kestrels above dry quilts of corn
spread next to brick hotels, general stores,

stone farm houses, red barns with hearts
and horses. I played ring toss in every country bar
lined with jars of pickled eggs and jerky, shopped

farmer’s market stalls tended by pink-cheeked
Amish girls in white aprons, hair pulled tight
and braided under capped buns. They sold

stacks of scrapple and cheese, apple butter, pretzels
and pig stomach while horse drawn wagons waited
for bearded men and black-brimmed boys to drive
 
them home to Paradise, Virginville, Intercourse, bed 
sheets flapping in the manure rich air. Inside my thick-
walled house, beams stained with ox blood, tradition

echoed in red ware pottery, pierced tin cupboards, 
blue and white crocks with stiff-necked plump Dutch
birds, but there were no women like me.

Lured down highways splattered with billboards,
past the sprawl of malls and smoke stacks, I searched
for them in bookstores and meetings, women

who lived in disguise, a man’s wife kissing another
man’s wife. Let me be clear about this yearning,
its embers stoked by more than a juicy bite,

more than feminist books devoured like bread, 
more than the company of other mothers alone
at night, their men working late. Body

and mind yoked to this cultivated garden 
of my own sowing, I chose wilderness.
When I packed up my babies to leave,

fear came too, but I was never kicked out.

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Gail Thomas’ books are Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Awards include the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read.” She is an editor and teacher who lives in Northampton, MA. See gailthomaspoet.com.

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