Orchard.
The mare roamed soft about the slope,
her rump was like a dancing girl's.
Gentle beneath the apple trees she pulled the grass
and shook the flies.
Her forelocks hung in tawny curls.
She had a woman's limpid eyes, a woman's patient stare
that grieves.
And when she moved among the trees, the dappled trees,
her look was shy, she hid her nakedness in leaves.
A delicate though weighted dance she
stepped while flocks of finches flew from tree to tree
and shot the leaves with songs of golden twittering.
How admirable her tender stance.
And then the apple trees were new, and she was new,
and we were new, and in the barns
the stallions stamped and shook the hills with trumpeting.