Tag Archives: horse

Horse, Dream, Man, Helsinki 1980

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Early morning and only street sweepers and a lone policeman are in view. The cop is Scandinavian, upright, descended from generations of straight men and women and he’s so bold he appears like a mythological extension of his horse, some god risen from an animal’s back. I don’t see well and have to draw near to find he’s a horseman and when I’m very close I hear the man talking gently, so quietly he’s like that ancient father we all long for, the horse father.

 

“My good girl,” he says, “my creeper, my softy hooved…”

“Lord,” I think, “he’s James Joyce.”

He says: “Girlie it’s a pinkpink morning.”

Says: “Experience, experience, it’s all in us.”

I’m walking home after a night of carousing. I’m 25, heartily youthful, so in love with the world my lips twitch, and in the coming years I’ll often talk to myself.

“You’re horse is beautiful,” I say, peering upward in rosy air. The horse is very tall and the man is tall and they are far above in emerging light.

 

Dedication: Poems for a Horse

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I am in Iowa City, Iowa where tonight I will read poems from my new book at Prairie Lights Books, one of the nation's premier independent bookstores. I am hereby announcing that my brief reading is dedicated to "Luigi" who is pictured below. For my blind readers Luigi is a thoroughbred "off the track" former race horse who entered our lives when my wife and I moved to Syracuse a year and a half ago. My wife rides Luigi and I feed him apples. Why dedicate a poetry reading to a horse? Because he has soul, he's a talker, and he has the kindest eyes of any animal I know. Sounds like poetry to me. And here is James Wright's amazing poem "A Blessing" because its one of the best poems I know:
"A Blessing"

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

–James Wright