The Dance

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.