An afternoon with dust-returned kin, who natter
to those can hear, by the horse drawn
stone pile—how that stout horse worked
for him for a pocket-smoothed lump of sweet.
The man’s reward, his sweat-dark cotton shirt.
Not like him to complain, unless eighteen
hands white draft Club snorted ‘This dang stone’s too
much for me!’ when it was not half the one
he’d just dragged from the field,
his big white jaws still smiling sugar. ‘Dang’s a four-
letter word,’ the old man smiled back a scold–
clearer than humans hiding sense in syllables. […]