Across the dale the woollen hills
Are ambered from the sinking sun
Sky, peach sweet and summer ripe
Pours a blush upon all that's done.
I trod this morn, the trail I watch
The spun hill soft with dusk
The loud cavalcade to supper settled
A life away from long day's rush.
The trail's trials, the slaver sun
The noisome cage of knotted oak
Are drenched and glassy distant now
All errors seem a joke.
The sweat stung scratch that branches cut
The scorched cast chest and threats of flies
Leave seasoned, loosened skin
Downy limbs and lidded sighs.
The boot that caught the twisted root
The kilns of fire beaten feet
Yawn lace agape in yard soaked gold
Like two hounds lying sound asleep.
Spent, the echo of curse and cry
Now lies in feathered forest
As sediment with songthrush calls
Below the breezy crest
For all the struggle along the track
The rasp as treads rake spitting dust,
The path dry, treacherous is in relief
An undulating bed of hush
A loosened thread, minor yarn
Sub-plot in a play of light
Shadow-steeping, the dyer's hand
Folds land slow till left to sight
Are keeping scenes mind kens worthy
In the shallows of the night.
