Horse PoetryHorse poetry is so inadequate a term to describe what JB writes.Heart of the horse, heart of the rider, heart of the country and countryside she loves - no, forget trying to explain it. Read on, and lose yourself in something that is far more than mere "horse poetry." THE TURNINGOne aged dun pony, late last spring, vanished --stolen or perished, we didn’t know. Not wolves, but the season turning. Packing salt, we trotted out to feed in April’s big wet snow. I dallied a bale from my grey Spanish mare, the fierce brave one, dragged it for miles to the leanto below the tall cottonwood grove. Beauty, we called that lost pony, a homely range-bred, cow-savvy, squat, square-jawed grulla dun only kids rode. However it was, Beauty did not jog home. Colic, the cold, it could be. Boot deep, soaked past our knees, we searched high as we could go, spurning what shelter you’ll find down arroyos. Whistled and yelled. No echo. Wind shrieked in fence wire; even my bold dappled Spanish mare slipped, floundered, hooves balling ice, flailing drifts that cramped her, belly high. Our gloves froze on the reins. Snow thickened, fell faster; wet leather squeaking, the shift of snow. Numb, streaming, shivering, bent to the quirt-cut wind, our eyes frosted almost closed; the thud of the horses’ hearts shook us. No answer. We turned, loped home. Now in the ease and dust of summer, I’ve turned wet cows to graze new ground, rallying my grey mare. It’s her when I crave joy or buck or lunge against the bull’s tilt of white rim- reddened eye. This day, I cantered my mare beyond stones and shadows. (She snorts and pretends to be wary of those.) Off this leap, the great birds, dark and golden, plummet and rise, defying crows. Green is the sweet sea of brome grass, the land’s mane blowing. Rivers wind the mesa’s smoke-stained bones, down to the chert tools left here: Scrapers, arrows rest under tough sage where the deep creek flows. Like a prayer, the water: We are born and broken, broken, born. In this cliff’s ten thousand year shade, her ribs rise, sharp, to gleam like snow. No undone Beauty, old or dark, forgets, or turning, lets us go. First published as one of four poems in Nebraska Review; winner of a Pushcart Prize. Return to Index of Jeannette Barnes poems
|
