Witch

Leggy, incorrigible from the outset

Whaling on her patient dam

Or sucking noisily. She cracked

Your sternum when you were

Tailing her as I drew blood.

Striking or wheeling for a kick

Rearing when the buyer came to look.

Breaking her, Pedro said she’ll win

With this temper. That name.

When she hit the track

The trainer shook his head “She

Clears the shedrow when she comes down

The aisle” Shaking her nose chain

Like a castanet.

Bullet works in the morning

That secular time when ecstasy

Did not roll her eyes.

Her first start she flew so wide

She ran a mile or more in six furlongs.

The railbirds shrank into the stands

Making a cross by her number.

Impertinent but cunning when she kindly took

Sugar from our hands, we locked on hope

Dashed in the afternoon

When the church of spectators prayed

And shouted in tongues over their tickets

And she went mad.

The music in her head

Clamoured for her to dance

To dwell or prop or buck

Whatever a sorceress wants.

A bolter the stewards said.

Irascible in the gate

A danger on the track. Maenad I birthed

That Easter morning. Ruled off.

My dark and lovely

Filly with a snip.

Quest

Peasant Life after Chagall

Feed sugar beets to the white horse,

Dance on the blue mountain,

Talk beneath the lamp

On a winter evening.

Let the little horse

Draw your grandfather up to the moon.

A kind man guides his wagon.

You are not sorry.

Your red cap and pug nose

Prepare you to tackle anything.

What do you have to know?

Only this. Let a tree grow in your mind,

Follow the footprints

Leading up to the sky. It is your life

Ahead of you.

The Circus Rider after Chagall

The red horse nods its panache

rolls its woman's eye.

The rider's acrobatic

stance defies the grave

laws of balance. Gaudy slipper hooked

over the left shoulder. One legged flamingo.

Right arm forming a classic gesture

of ballet. The horse rocks on

as the full moon dangles

from a laurel branch

like the hazardous white fruit

that can only be plucked by the angel

flying with moth wings

glued to a mortal body.

The circus is the sensual

ring in which love enacts

its risks, a production

of gasps, thrills.

The angel's arms open wide.

It has fallen in love with a painted horse

with the seduction of clowns.

O, it has fallen

like moonlight onto the earth

its wings burning off

its body becoming

three rings of joy.

<i>Chagall Poems</i>

IN THE ALBUM

At the third switchback we pull off

where the honeymooners fell

and I step forth as always onto the peninsula of rock

to pose against a jackpine sticking out

of the cliff face like an arthritic finger

pointing to disaster. The sky is always

cobalt with thunderheads building

to the west, the pinecones underfoot, a jay

chattering and with my jackknife I carve

my initials once again onto the lodgepole.

There's a bottomless lake, an abandoned mine

with fool's gold and rose quartz. There's a child

making snowballs in July, bear sign,

a clawed tree, an elk in the mist of a meadow

and stepping stones across Rock Creek

where we fish for cut-throat trout.

The past preserved in photographs,

the falls in the backgroud, up close there's me

on a sorrel mustang about to lope off

into the rest of my life.

Eclipse

THIS PLACE WHERE I AM HAPPY

The dark spreads its palm

From nowhere to nowhere,

Outside, the frozen crust

Of the barnyard spangles

Under the arclight. Snow

Captions fences neatly.

Each footprint jails a shadow.

The horses stamp in their straw,

Muzzles a penumbra

Of crystal, breath white balloons

In which no language hovers.

Their droppings golden stones,

Eyes of dreamy amber. The cinder block walls

Sparkle as cold bites through

Sinking red and congealed

In the window-hung bulb.

The black wind hurts my face

As I trudge houseward tugging the metal pail

That dances empty from its bail.

Nothing cries from rooftops

Or circles out of trees.

Cats huddle in the loft

Frostnipped ears rounding

To the horses’ even breaths

And the shift of massive haunches.

I halt, set down the pail

In a white expanse that is perfect

As long as I do not move.

South Dakota Review

ILLNESS OF HORSES: A WOMAN MEDITATES

1.      String Halt: A curious affliction. The walk is peculiarly

Exaggerated. A woman wearing glass heels searching for

Her prince. Authorities agree this is a nervous condition.

2.      Lampas: Your mouth swells with bad blood. Cry out in

Agony. Rub with salt, burn with hot irons. None of these

Methods will help.

3.      Founder: An enchantment of green apples. Monopolies of

Grain. Disease of the insatiable. Lie down, remove

Your shoes. The bones are coming apart.

4.      Heaves : Hard cough, labored breathing.

An unsoundness of respiration. Failure of love.

5.      Forging: You overrun yourself. An injury of ambition.

The wounds raw and new. Proceed with caution. Proceed

With caution.

6.      Cribbing: Bite obstacles grunting, sucking wind. A

Common vice. Boredom of marriage.

7.      Moon Blindness: Your eyes turns green and opaque. Tears

Fail you. Remain stalled in darkness until the solitary

Pasture silvers in moonlight.

8.      Staggers: A defect of the heart or brain. Confusion

Worsens in heat. You remain dazed for hours, or forever.

9.      Joint Evil: Infection of the navel. The world centers

Turns in against you. There is no cure. A marked

Inclination to lie down and die.

Midway Journal

Hoarfrost

The appaloosa grazes a glazed field.
A twist of branches
risks its signature.
The sky's a blank.

Desultorily, the horse
divines the pattern of its hunger.
A hawk
plummets from the crown of a burr-oak.
Something dies
without fanfare.

Sleet falls. A rain of blind needles.
A speechless wind. The gibbous rise
of headlands to the east
black with menace.

Pour your eyes
into this landscape. Now you'll move slowly
as the appaloosa working his way
across the silver pasture
mouthful by mouthful.

West Branch. Collected in The Boundary Waters by Joan Colby
Damascus Road Press.

BET ON GRACE

For my mother

Had to bet on Bet On Grace, my mother’s name

Because she was always lucky,

Held the only winning ticket in our

Group at Louisville in Spend A Buck’s

Derby, she liked the name. She liked to

Take a chance, explore a road

She’d never been on, play cards for money.

Bet On Grace came in and paid

A decent price. Tailed off after that

Though she often hit the board

If she was right. I know better

Than to bet a name, but always watch

To see if Bet On Grace was on the morning line.

Mother’s luck ran out as everybody’s will

Whether your bet is pari-mutuel or against the house.

The day comes when all bets are off but

Bet On Grace keeps showing up in the program

Running cheap and hard always worth a look.

Chiron Review

TWO DEATHS

I

The hurt owl

In the gravel roadway shifts

From one claw to the other.

The iris of one eye splattered

Like ink on yellow

Cellophane. The other

Stares, a perfect target,

Distrustful, woozy.

It has fluffed itself

Big as a tombstone, tufted

Earfeathers, scythe beak clacking,

Its little snake-pale tongue.

II

The colt is still alive

On his feet, plodding, head down

In slow circles, fur matted with sawdust,

Eye, a prayer of flies,

Chainsawing dullness, legs buckle

Him down into a heap,

Swollen belly, head flung

At a distorted angle.

Last night, he thrashed in the stall

While you inoculated sleep.

A grey-white rat slid past

On a beam above your head, ghostlike.

I held the water bucket

To the colt’s lips, you supported

Him as he drank, shallowly,

Then sighed and rested

His head on a flake of straw.

Dawn gripped the edges of the window,

Mourning doves began to call.

The colt’s sides heaved

And heaved and heaved. He went on breathing.

III

It will be another scorcher. Already, heat

Pleats the inner wrists of willow leaves

And in the dips of pasture, mist

Is burning off.

You choke a rat

From the white cat’s jaws.

A gift of sustenance for the owl

Who perches on a fallen branch in shade,

Lifting one tilted hinge

Lopsidedly as if recalling

Long noiseless swoops from barn to barn

When he was still a menacing shadow.

He accepts the rat

With dignity. His intact eye

An awful inquiry

Fixing ours. The third lid shutters, opaque,

Back and forth over the blasted one,

A yellow map of jagged  black islands.

He puffs up big at our approach

But doesn’t flee. He is the predator.

IV

The colt sprawls in the sun

In a dome of flies.

Sudden violent twistings, then

Collapse, His huge dark eye

Moist as a grape, rolls

In terror. His cries

Are silent ones. Just weaned, he’s learned

The hopelessness of bawling.

You give him morphine. He doesn’t

Want to die, this feisty little one,

Staggering to his tiny hoofs to thrust

His muzzle into water, come up dripping,

Not swallowing, his eyes

Terribly hurt, then down, rolling again

Learning how to stop living

In the agony of a twisted gut.

V

The backhoe comes to dig him under.

In the far field, mares in foal

Are grazing, the August sky

Shorn of clouds, bloats bright blue,

Brash

As the barn man with his red muscles

And unblinking pleasant bovine stare.

VI

The owl waits for the long day

To cripple into nightfall.

He won’t make it

Either, eyeshot, equilibrium

Vanquished. He ruffles himself

To the largest version of threat he can

And postures furiously against tomorrow.

the new renaissance

FENCES

Augur corkscrewed through topsoil

The color of Grand Marnier, bored

Deeper into rich liquor where oak posts

Creosoted against rot were set

And tamped. Four boards properly

Nailed on the obverse side. Squared

And braced corners. Sixteen foot

Pole gates hung.

Seeded in a mix of timothy and clover,

A cover crop of oats to shade growth,

They surveyed their toil, the horses

Thundered off the van and heads down

Divined the ritual of grazing.

Fenced and crossfenced, pastures switched

To rest and recover. Trodden dirt

By the stock tank graveled. Loose boards

Shored up. For years, side by side,

Pounding nails, repairing ravages of cribbers,

Leaners, butt rubbers, kickers,

Foals that slid under, racers that crashed

Or sailed. Those fences sturdy as biceps

As homespun hearts, as presumed vigor.

After she went into the home and the horses

Were auctioned, he stood squarely

On his porch as if the loose

Skin of his jowls and upper arms

And the way his overalls hung

From his bones as if he’d become

Insubstantial were simply a figment

And the shadow he cast would cease

To lengthen like a runaway colt

Getting away from him and watched

The fences, post and rail,

Come down.

Chiron Review

WHAT HORSES MEAN

How fleet, how difficult to spear.

Bewitch their shapes in red clay on cave walls.

How they uplift a man above his neighbor.

Carry him to commerce or to war.

How they can be tamed with whip or whisper.

How they learn to stand quietly and wait.

How incorrigible, they sunfish or rear

Over backwards, how they won’t relent.

How they stampede, heedless into traffic

Or jog through city streets bearing a child.

How they will race, impelled to be the first

Though their cannon bones shatter, their hearts break.

How grazing in pastures, they focus a landscape

So the eye blesses them with attention.

How early artists saw them extended

As birds in flight, beautiful but wrong

How the camera at last defined the action

Of their legs at the gallop.

How their names emboldened myth

Pegasus, Bucephalus, Pale Horse of the Apocalypse.

How they depend upon the herd, fly from danger

Sleep standing like sentries, always alert.

How they allow the iron in their mouths,

The saddle, the spur, collect their motion.

How they kowtow or struggle

Or with dignity display their elevated gaits.

How their statued posture reveals the nature

Of the deaths of commanders.

How they define the nature

Of force in their supplanters.

Portland Review

CHORES: FILLING WATER BUCKETS

A rush of concentrated silver slaps

the bucket's emptiness. Wait till the brim

is nearly lapped, then lift and haul.

A full bucket

is a heavy thing. Just one unbalances

reminding symmetry eases the task.

Something flinches in the muscle. Buckets hang heavy

from each hand.

Winter mornings, the buckets are frozen solid.

In one, a black upended mouse

like a glacier-trapped mastadon.

Dumped, the ice domes form a row,

the buckets present emptiness, unquenchable darkness.

Nevertheless,

there is a peacefulness in the silent barn,

a late ray of sunlight creasing the dusty panes,

the stalls thickly bedded,

the water buckets brimming.

Hurricane Review

FOUNDER

When the horse dies

The brain is last to succumb.

The thrashing legs stilled.

The twitching lip.

The eye shines onward

Desperate to live. I wait

For it to film.

Needle in the vein

She goes down fast

Not like a wall crumbling

In tutus of dust

but like a stricken tree, sudden,

Awful, loud.

Now at last

Lying peaceful

Relaxed as she slept

When newborn

Her dam standing sentry

In the ancient habit of mares.

Founder, that’s a word

For horses and ships.

Coffin bones sinking and spars

Deep creaking agony

Of blood and ocean,

Common denominator of salt.

She licked salt blocks,

A bin of oats,

Bucket dark with water.

Once she raced like a schooner

Hooves and sails flying,

Steel in her mouth

A crowd shouting

Like a crew sighting land.

Her stall empty now,

Lonesome bay of straw

Gilded with dust.

In winter in the stone barn

She steamed

As if below decks.

In summer, manure smoked

As if alive, inoffensive waste

Of grass eaters, a holiness mad

Nebuchadnezzar hungered for.

Evolution made the horse

Pose upon landlocked toes

Like a ballet dancer. The hoof cannot expand

Blood flows and flows

Loosening anchors of laminae

Till like a ship broadsided in big seas

The horse rocks back

Sweating, its salted hide

Glazing eyes and grinding teeth

Like a keel sundering

Is lost now, lost

To the renderer and his hooks.

the new renaissance

DEAD HORSES

Now that they are dead or gone, the dream

is always of a field where running horses

flash past, hooves catching and echoing light,

the grass lush, milkweed or Queen Anne's lace

along the fencerows, then suddenly it's winter

snow is falling, shapes are haloed, the sky is bleak.

You might awaken, amazed the sound of horses

has passed, diminished just as a streak of daylight

pours through the curtains, fills bastions of lace

as your eyes fill with sorrow recalling a winter

where nothing ever thawed, each vista bleak,

you knew the vault of loss, the end of dreams

but would not acknowledge it, that blight of light

unraveling the seams of some grandmother's lace

concoction that formed a history, that overwintered

in every house you slept in, every bleak

ceiling that you woke to emptying dreams

into a landscape now bereft of horses.

Those horses, the dappled one like old lace

fading into the slushy nouns of winter

its whites and blacks and greys as bleak

as a deserted park, no childhood dreams

anchored by swingsets or gymnastic horses

on which you vaulted, slim and young and light

as any snowflake in any kind of winter,

the brilliant sled-filled one, even the bleak

fog frosted dawns, the ones that hid all dreams

until they burst from the icy mists like horses

racing to the barns in that first light

presaging hunger, muzzles coated with the lace

of their breathing, how they stormed the bleak

hollows where your final splintered dreams

corroded. You want them now, those horses

crashing the earth with sound as if light

had been surpassed by speed, as if the laces

that bind you to your bones gave way to winter's

blast, unreining every dream, freeing the horses

of your past, lightening that blanket of heavy lace

until you open your arms to winter and everything holy or bleak.

Georgia State University Review