The Dance
...to the music of yesteryear
It doesn’t matter
That the fence is down.
The days when horses grazed
Are gone.
I’ll walk the ragged fenceline
And pick the path
Amid hardened ruts that once
Were hoofprints.
The touchstones of my happiness.
Rhythmic “clop-clop”
On a November morn
Down to the creek
To find a semi-circle of cows
Along the bank
Where the water yet flows, untouched
By the night’s frost.
From their nostrils, soft clouds
Warm the morning chill.
The heat of Poco’s flanks
Rising from beneath the saddle,
The world
A frozen idyll.
In the paddock Cassy waits, impatient
For breakfast,
For Poco to return.
Tomorrow, she will go instead.
But now, head to the wind,
She waits
Peering resolutely
Through tiny icicles where the snow
Frames her eyelids
Snorting in indignation,
In ecstasy
At his return.
Nuzzling, they breathe as one
And endure
The undressing –
Bridle, saddle, blanket –
The litany of wardrobe,
The rubdown.
The intimacy is mine,
Forever.
A sudden puff of icy crystals
Intrudes
And they gallop
Toward some distant melody –
Two dancers –
Across the paddock
And away.
Later, behind the twisted willow,
Cassy and Poco stand
Back to front,
Rumps reversed,
Braced leisurely
Against an eastern blow,
Their backs flecked silver
With icy strands.
They shift in unison,
Precision equine
Choreography, set to the music
Of yesterday.
Today it doesn’t matter
That the fence is down.
Those days are gone.
But, in the morning chill
I will hear the “clop-clop”
Beating out the rhythm to
That distant melody
And, by the fenceline,
I’ll always see
Silver horses dancing
In the wind.
About the Creator
Marie McGrath Davis
If I didn't write, I would explode.
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