| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | The Threshing-floor | | By H. L. Davis |
| | From “To the River Beach”
SEE, in a dead vine, | |
| How many blackbirds are swinging—the lives there | |
| In vines and in dead leaves that need no help of you. | |
| Rein your horse into the salal, Davis, follow down | |
| The cleared ground, this frosty day, to the threshing-floor. | 5 |
| Red is women close together in the broken weeds, | |
| Watching the horses: red dresses and blue, | |
| Thin cloth of early-day dresses spread among the burrs. | |
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| Yellow is where the threshing-floor is, and horses’ hoofs | |
| Beat the grain-heads into chaff; and cold wind | 10 |
| Strews chaff over the bushes and to the eyes. | |
| Women call to the horse-driver, and laugh out | |
| At the man behind the horses who catches the horse-droppings | |
With his hands to keep the grain clean.
And, crippled old man, | |
| You shake in this cold wind, yet have come out-of-doors | 15 |
| To see your grain threshed again: under the sky, clearer | |
| Than a beach, you stand shaking, and face the chaff with red eyes. | |
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| I fork a horse on the hill above the threshing-floor. | |
| Driver and bundle-handlers, the ones in red dresses, | |
| I must lose none of this; because men I have known | 20 |
| Are less simple, or are secret as birds in vines. | | | | |
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