In the Pasture Ipswich MA

Two gray horses graze side by side in a pasture along Argilla Road in Ipswich, heads down, shoulders almost touching. Sunlight slides across their backs and catches the near one in cream and warm gold; the far one stays cooler, silver and slate. Behind them a split-rail fence crosses the field toward a red barn, and a tree at the left edge throws a pool of shade.

The ground carries the whole picture: deep green in front, bright lemon where the light lands, and a few red flecks scattered through it.

Most gray horses are not born that way. A foal can arrive bay, chestnut or black and lighten year by year, the graying usually showing first around the eyes, until by six to twelve years old the coat is nearly white. These two have almost arrived.

Argilla Road runs from the South Green out past farms and pastures to Crane Beach. The name comes from Argilla Farm, on record since 1637, and the word is Greek for white clay, the potter’s earth found nearby. The painter Arthur Wesley Dow sketched this same road in 1899, when it was still gravel.

White clay in the name, two pale coats in the grass, and the long quiet of a summer day.