Dog Days

A love song organised around a labourer’s day, thinking of him out in the fields tearing up the earth and liking him best at home, where the want is plain and unembarrassed. Underneath runs the habit no vow can break. She promised her mama she would quit him, and every night she is still dreaming about him.

Then the trouble underneath the sweetness gets named. He walks a fine line between God and animal, worshipped like communion in bedroom ceremonials, and love has never been more than pain, so his hurt reads as proof of it. The verdict lands on everyone at once, him, her, the two of them together, no good, repeated until it sounds like acceptance.