F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 4 ![]() THE LOVE OF AGED HORSESby Jane Hirshfield | |||||||||||||
Hear Jane Hirshfield read this poem (in RealAudio): RA 28.8, RA 14.4 (For help, see a note about the audio.) Also by Jane Hirshfield: The Song (1986) Within This Tree (1991) Lying (1994) Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight (1996) The Poet (1997) Apple (1999) Go to: An Audible Anthology Poetry Pages |
Because I know tomorrow his faithful gelding heart will be broken when the spotted mare is trailered and driven away, I come today to take him for a gallop on Diaz Ridge. Returning, he will whinny for his love. Ancient, spavined, her white parts red with hill-dust, her red parts whitened with the same, she never answers. But today, when I turn him loose at the hill-gate with the taste of chewed oat on his tongue and the saddle-sweat rinsed off with water, I know he will canter, however tired, whinnying wildly up the ridge's near side, and I know he will find her. He will be filled with the sureness of horses whose bellies are grain-filled, whose long-ribbed loneliness can be scratched into no-longer-lonely. His long teeth on her withers, her rough-coated spots will grow damp and wild. Her long teeth on his withers, his oiled-teakwood smoothness will grow damp and wild. Their shadows' chiasmus will fleck and fill with flies, the eight marks of their fortune stamp and then cancel the earth. From ear-flick to tail-switch, they stand in one body. No luck is as boundless as theirs. Copyright © 1994 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; February 1994; Within This Tree; Volume 273, No. 2; page 81. |
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