Horses

Friday, August 25th, 2006

I was looking through some old emails, clearing my mailbox of saved drafts - and I found this poem that I wrote about impressions, experiences from when I was in Mongolia....it seems so long ago...

***
o horses!
we smell of milk and sour sugar,
of apples and toasted brown grass.

and in the race's last rolling notes,
our sliced ears hear
the shrill cries of children,
the saddled and gold-costumed babies,
squeezing our necks with their dimpled thighs,
flying with righteous screams cooled by patches
of skinny wildflowers
when we fall

we open and close our eyes slowly
peering
through long, rough hair
sifting
across the giant heat of soft noses

our bony backs remember babies in yellow costumes,
squeezing our dusty necks with their butter thighs;
and our thick hearts blink at their paper crowns,
rolling away in the wind
when we have
no more lungs
for running

and breathing turns the stomach in a twist.

i am content, laying rest into rust
eating dirt and sighing with seed.

i am gilded in ground nest for old folded bones
and scorched teeth stung white by the sun.
i am all stripped away of the dark life that comes
crawling and crackling
for the sweetness of meat
and a strong house of bone

we rest in piles of rocks and death charms -
smudgy brass cups
with prayers,
echoing round the rim.

and fluttering from rocks
are the threadbare blue sashes
whose silk has come
un-a-ravelling,
streaming blueness like blessings
from the wind's fiery waves
with a coolness
in the end
like kisses
blown into star-soaked night

so the ribbon-lashed mountains rock forward,
kneeling,
in silky dust entrails
and pure straps of sand

after

a blaze of electricity
has needled bright rain
into pastures where we grazed
nearby.

***

(c)2001 Piper Livingston Van Ness