The pendulum sun swung
In arcs of dying days.
Our breath hung sullen in
The halt of heat; we walked
A tightrope dream of rain.
A circle of buzzards rode,
Shadows of death on wind
Wound the valley up.
The weather withered grass
And leaves curled brown and died;
We wished to hang our hearts
Upon despair, and go.
But in shade, deep treed
By the last undry hole
In the blistered creek,
A rain crow called: that faith
In a blind eye might see
How some haphazard wind,
Cloud caught, could wring rain.
We could not help but look
With backward eyes on spring,
When fresh fields lay to sun
Like a clutch of eggs before
The warmth of the hatching hen.
I had watched at sundown
A plodding man and team,
In a gait too steady to
Reveal their weariness,
Plow a wrinkled frown
In the hill’s brow above
The woods. From where I watched
The man and plow and hill
Were one unbroken shadow
Standing against the sun.
Now, in time of drouth,
Old men rest adaze
In the dog day shade,
Prodding the earth with canes
The way some half brave boys
Nudge a dead dangerous dog.
Still in the deeper woods
A rain crow calls; the man
I watched in spring comes
Again to the hill to see
The wreckage of his pains,
The straight rowed wilted crop,
Heat beaten beyond bearing.
His restless hands, ignorant
Of heart’s despair, lead him
To a hoe; he cuts a few
Rankest weeds before he goes.
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