Countrymen in August

Whenever we worked on the creekside shed
there was always something else to do
such times as we were stumped, or nails ran short,

or the sun came round the fir and baked us down
from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned
like old fence-gossips against the framing

of the walls and sipped at solar tea,
watching the edge of a cloud's long skirt
chase the neighbor's horses leisurely

across his pasture, down the camas swale
and up the other side, against the bold backdrop
of maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked

to amble down to our corner, stand and watch.
We couldn't cure them of the shies,
though we might try with handfuls

of our green grass, or a few choice
coaxing words. They'd check us out:
first one black blink from behind

the forehead blaze, and then the other,
cocking their long heads round to see
our self-assured and predatory faces, eyes up front

gazing on them like horse-flesh accountants,
according to their reckoning. Their flanks
would shiver, and their forefeet stamp,

scoring the earth in a language built of weight.
Some movement then would always start them off:
a silvery chisel hefted, or water bottle sloshed,

spattering sun. They'd hammer away up the swale,
and lovingly we'd watch them go, coveting
our neighbor's land and all that lived thereon,

as countrymen in August always do.