The Clearing Of The Land

The trees went up the hill

And over it.

Then the dry grasses of the pasture were

Only a kind of blonde light

Settling everywhere

And framing the randomly strewn

Outcropping of gray stone

That anchored them to soil.

Who were they?

One in the picture, and one not, and both

Scotch-Irish drifters,

With nothing in common but a perfect contempt

For a past;

Ancestors of stumps and fallen trees and . . .

One is sitting on a sorrel mare, idly tossing

Small stones at the rump

Of a steer that goes on grazing

At tough rosettes of pasture grass

And switching its tail

In what is not even irritation.

What I like, what I

Have always liked, is the way he tosses each small

Stone without thinking, without

A thought for anything, not even for aiming it,

The easy, arcing forearm nonchalance

Like someone fly-casting.

For this is what he wanted:

To be among the stones, the grasses,

Savoring a stony self

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 twitching

Its withers lightly to keep

The summer flies away,

And the woman in the flower print dress hemmed

With stains

A half mile off

Is the authoress of no more than smoke rising,

Her sole diary,

From a distant chimney.

They have perhaps a year or two

Left of this

Before History begins to edit them into

Something without smoke or flies, something

Beyond all recognition.