Olympian

Crowned in strands of late smoldering goldenrod, the bull grazes, lifts his great head, listens (a rising lament from the herd) cows with white faces, a masked chorus, mantled in shadows of maples, with troubled, trumpeting voices, move to a ponderous drum-beat, halt in attitudes of attention (the shrill of persistent saw -- a woodwind pitched to winter) in slow procession, the cattle (a crusty farmhand guides them) come now from fields, come toward the yard to the rimed edge of the watering trough.