The horses, quiet, rest in the stable.
My favorite chestnut stamps a hoof
and raises one fine ear at the saddle,
the picks and brushes I lay inside the stall.
I brush his copper hair, slip the bridle
over his head and lead him to the ring.

As sand and gravel blow across the ring,
my horse turns a drooping ear to the stable,
the warm scratching hay, out of the unbridled
chilling wind. He kicks up gravel with his hooves,
throws back his head, defiant, balks, and stalls.
Winter weighs down our backs like an ancient saddle.

The supple leather shines, the dark brown saddle
soft under my hands. Dust motes in the ring
spin in lazy pirouettes. In the stalls
the horses snuffle strands of hay, the stable
filled with rustling mice and muted stomping hooves
and swishing tails, hooks draped with empty bridles.

Once, on the mountain, I gripped my horse’s bridle,
clinging to the reins, but slipped from the saddle,
tumbled down next to his pounding hooves,
my glasses cracked, covered in leaves, head ringing.
He stopped, nudged my arm, his body warm, stable
as knotted oaken walls in old barn stalls.

I imagine, while standing in a stall,
the ancient men who were the first to bridle
wild horses, to round them up in stables
and toss their wiry bodies in crude saddles
on dancing stallions’ backs, force the bridle rings
into their mouths, hammer nails into their hooves.

The frozen pasture ground shakes with pounding hooves,
ten sleek bodies flowing, manes streaming, time stalled
between suspended hoofbeats, the cold ring
of the morning sun, high-pitched whinnies bridled
in the stinging air, their backs bare, no saddles
or binding straps of leather, no stables.

I love the thudding hooves, straining bridles,
galloping from stalls in pitching saddles,
and the dusty ring, for the moment, stable.

the dark. And I imagined that we climbed
in a dense primeval wood, even before
the cave men in their mammoth skins had found
the gods of flame and ash, before they painted
on wet cave walls with pigments made of berries,
their fingers arcing over stone. And then
the path rose up, bent sharp and wrapped around
the mountain’s curve, until we stood, our faces damp,
beneath the slowly blinking radio tower lights.

in the cool half-light
below the embankment

which is covered with climbing weeds
and brown pine needles –

and above it, scattered stones,
two bottles, crumpled cigarettes,

and rusted rivets strewn
between rotting railroad ties.

We rode among the ashy aspens last winter,
our horses’ hooves crunched through bracken last winter.

I kept the letter you wrote me, tucked
under a wine bottle, dampened, last winter.

We stumbled into nameless pubs, floors sticking
to our dirty boots in London last winter.

My fingers trembled on the ferry railing,
clutching yours, gloved but frozen, last winter.

Sunlight crept between the blinds of your sister’s
place, waking us at three in Brooklyn last winter.

I watched you fry some eggs, wrist flicking left
and right, tossing in spoons of cumin last winter.

Laughing, drunk, you cut out paper costumes
sitting on my parents’ kitchen floor last winter.

In the freezing rain we walked through gray-brown parks
in Paris, threw coins in dry fountains last winter.

The moonlight played across your face, its curves
glancing through sheer curtains last winter.

I remember you calling my name, Charlee,
in the snow in southern Paris, socks sodden, last winter.

The palm fronds with their jagged outlines
cut dark against the sky
shake brittle fingers. The humid wind
rises. The hammock rocks, empty, back and forth.
Lightning reaches across

the horizon, stabbing deep into
the sycamores and sassafras,
then retreating back above the treetops.
Inside, my parents watch the evening news.
The fire, it says, is leaping

over six-lane highways, swallowing
houses, eating the trailing leaves
of willow trees and playground swings,
engulfing cars and fishing boats, idling
in deserted driveways, asphalt

bubbling in the heat. Here, the wind chimes
do not sing, but clatter, banging
their thin metal sides together, drowning
out the television’s chatter. And then,
the smell of the swamps, burning.

Adults clustered, whispering,
glancing at the dead.
I crept slowly between
their legs, ducking my head.

Kneeling by the casket,
I stared at the gray face,
stiff like wax, touched my palm
to its cold cheeks and hands.

I grabbed the rubbery fingers,
reached under thick black
glasses rims, and pulled
the spongy eyelids back.

My fingers poked its lips,
prodded the nose, the ears,
smelled the chrysanthemum stench
hovering around the bier.