Daily Poem: April 16

The horse


Long day serene and feverish
and every night like a bellowing—
the tap drips, the sink drains,
animals pace up and down hallways.

Artless light fills rooms
so we can see better the boundaries
of their walls, the certainty of a table,
an electric cup of coffee.

Outside they’re cleaning up the alley,
but there’s nowhere
to put all the trash.
We cut paths: with the familiar
rhythm of footfall on a packed trail
through dense forest, a paved road
in the center of a park.

Anything can betray you in an instant.
A hip, an Achilles’ tendon (appropriately),
the wrong side of the bed.

To be alive is to lose track of time.
To desire the horse and the field
through which it charges,
blaring and immodest.