Ode to an Amish Sky

In a far less furious, god-fearing world
women beat patch quilts with brooms
before being dipped in a tub of lye soap
eating the sins of the flesh.

Their body’s silhouette of thick polyester
sewn over every inch of skin are covered
in memories the needle remembers, like
prayers said for the troubled and tempted:

men plowing fields of distraction whose eyes
look away from young college girls,
risking their innocence staring at the hay,
those hard round bales of life pitched by his fork into the sky.


Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington. His poems are forthcoming in The Chiron Review, The Bitter Oleander, Lily Poetry Review and The Adirondack Review. He is the author of “Waxing the Dents” (Brick Road Press), and his book, “Psalmania,” was a finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry.

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