Can You Ride Horses There?
June 17th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
Originally appeared in Iota (U.K.).
CAN YOU RIDE HORSES THERE?
for Karen
The brook plash, the wings of a robin through air,
wind as it wraps around your ears, head,
through long auburn hair, how sunlight
skipping on water has a sound all its own
you can not hear.
_______The rock you sit on, damp and hard
_______sure beats a hospital bed.
As you dangle purple toenails in the cool wet,
Bowering Park passes you by like a nineteen year old
in a Mustang booming hip hop down the street,
muffled in the distance.
You feel like falling just to know what it is
to hit the ground
______________maybe from a window—
the pause it creates, that space
within a coma,
______________the world passing by
while a machine breathes for you,
your mind filled with trails, paths, rivers,
palominos and the tempo of hooves
your hair strained through wind.
______Can the unconscious tune in
______to our static?
And suddenly words are so rare,
and he’s there in blue sheets and a johnny coat,
in every i, every u, his name
like the punch of a kick drum—
unconscious, his mind probing
wavelengths for something to clasp,
or something more intimate—
______a steady gait, hooves on gravel.
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