As Clean as Wright’s Coal Tar Soap

I know a woman who actually
cleans the dirt off a bar of soap.
Her husband is a clean man, too;
always smells of Wright’s Coal Tar.
Spends his days on knobbly knees
planting seed against the will of
God’s own wind. His only mistress
is the land — widely indifferent
to his wife, who dreams of the day
when his manhood ploughs more
than silty soil. And there they stand,
the strangest of company, waiting
for the other to make a first move.