Virginia Hamilton Adair

Past the fourth cloverleaf, by dwindling roads
At last we came into the unleashed wind;
The Chesapeake rose to meet us at a dead end
Beyond the carnival wheels and gingerbread.

Forsaken by summer, the wharf. The oil-green waves
Flung yellow foam and sucked at disheveled sand.
Small fish stank in the sun, and nervous droves
Of cloud hastened their shadows over bay and land.

Always the caravan of sound made us halt
to admire the swinging and the swift go-by
of beasts with enormous hooves and heads
beating the earth or reared against the sky.

Do not reread, I mean glance ahead to see
what has become of the colossal forms:
everything happened at the instant of passing:
the hoof-beat, the whinny, the bells on the harness,