The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2011

Grief and Horses

In memoriam PDD

The horses on the other bank waiting – as ours

cross the soaking, sucking meadow

and clomp in the fast water, too strong for our feet –

their rumps to us, their riders letting them graze,

their haunches bunching as they shift their weight, and easing,

bunching and easing

like water over rock gathering and falling,

the sun on bay, pink-dappled, snowmelt-spotted, brown

flanks that make you think of the ruddy cores of fallen pines,

rings that counted the years crumbled and spilled, softening

into dust –

how hard it is to write this beauty aright, that the earth with

so little effort

raises up, and with less, scarcely a shiver,

sucks back when it falls. Every hold

relaxes in time, and this means death to us, and the tearing

effort of grief that is much like dying,

like bursting through something that still resists:

a great handsome horse sure of its path, surging

where we did not think a path could be made –

strong, cold, white as water falling.

Patrick Daly