HORSE POETRY
Summer white skies, clean sheets
of paper dreams listening for words
to rise over the Sierras, to slip
between the peaks and tumble down
canyons to settle in the sycamores –
like cattle, like the deer and elk
before us, to find a soft, sandy bed
in the shade. Reaching deeply into
dawn’s cool silence, I wait for a sign
of migration off blond hillsides,
for the sound of the first word
that gathers others, hearing only
the occasional and irregular tempo
of steel-shod hooves upon mangers –
saddle horses hoping for alfalfa hay
and a day off to write poetry. Long
heads listening in the labial folds
of granite rock, where they say
women were drawn by the moon -
where fine dirt and forgotten words
mix and stir beneath their feet.
It seems I may be editing this as we go.