The trees went up the
And over it.
Then the dry grasses of the pasture
Only a kind of blonde
Settling
And framing the randomly
Outcropping of gray
That anchored them to soil.
Who were they?
One in the picture, and one not, and
Scotch-Irish drifters,
With nothing in common but a perfect
For a past;
Ancestors of stumps and fallen trees and . . .
One is sitting on a sorrel mare, idly
Small stones at the
Of a steer that goes on
At tough rosettes of pasture
And switching its
In what is not even irritation.
What I like, what
Have always liked, is the way he tosses each
Stone without thinking, withoutA thought for anything, not even for aiming it,
The easy, arcing forearm
Like someone fly-casting.
For this is what he wanted:
To be among the stones, the grasses,
Savoring a stony
That reminded him of no one else,
And on land where that poacher,
Law,
Had not yet stolen through his fences,
The horse beneath him
Its withers lightly to
The summer flies away,
And the woman in the flower print dress hemmed With stainsA half mile
Is the authoress of no more than smoke rising,
Her sole diary,
From a distant chimney.
They have perhaps a year or
Left of
Before History begins to edit them
Something without smoke or flies,
Beyond all recognition.
