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c o u n t r y fo l k i n a u g u s t

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

or the sun reached round the fir and baked us down
from raftering, roofing, or the like. We leaned,
gossip-like, against the fresh framing

of the walls, sipping solar tea,
watching the edge of a cloud's long skirt
chase the neighbors' horses leisurely

across their pasture, down the camas swale
and up the other side, against the black contrast
of maple-shrouded hills. The horses liked

to amble 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 another,

cocking their long heads round to see
our self-assured, predatory faces, eyes front,
gazing on them, horse-flesh accountants

by their reckoning. Their flanks
would shiver, and their forefeet stamp,
scoring the earth in a language built of weight.

Some movement would always spook them off:
a silvery chisel hefted, or water bottle sloshed,
spattering sun. They'd hammer up the swale;

lovingly we'd watch them go, coveting
our neighbors' lands and all that lived thereon,
as country folk in August always do.