Walker Evans: “Hale County, Alabama 1936”
Andrea Bradley

It is not so much a love
but a union, a marriage
between flesh and sun,
blood and wheat.  This man,
the husband of his field,
the dust and scrape of
her kiss always
on his face and arms.
She has carved the fiber
and muscle of his body,
mapping veins like swollen
eddies, the feet of Jesus.

He rests in a doorway
with his daughter,
the seed of the union,
a product of soil and sweat.
Her cheeks, not quite raw
with sun, frame eyes
like her father's, the blue
of Alabama sky and worry.
Her mother has sown
wheat dust into her scalp,
reaping strands fine
and resilient.  So young
with skin still tight and
browned with work and dirt.