It’s not because the halter in my
hand has any final say
that my black horse, floating
like a planet around me the past
twenty minutes, suddenly gathers himself
from daybreak and air and stops
just inches away, all
the fireworks of first sun caught
in his black tossing head-
he’s ready to let gravity
touch his feet and settle him
into mammal again: sweat, hair, hard
lungfuls of air. He slips
his nose through the halter
and I’m caught in the current
between us as though born to it,
a shimmering silence, slow-motion glints
of hand and hide, non-words rising
like bubbles into my mind’s washed light
as wait, listen, touch, while the sun
pulls itself up another notch
and dissolves the black hole I woke to
this morning alone in my breakable
bones and my memory full of holes,
alone in my other language
forming itself again into lists.
I lead him to the saddle and bridle
and the corral full of jumps. His hide
glows and ripples, volcanic, but his head
doesn’t worry the rope, doesn’t
lengthen or close the space between us.
He moves on coiled springs. The rope
shivers in my hand. My pale body
rises from its crouch over a fire
so deep it may be a dream,
rises in its blanket of fear
and muscle, rises again in its
blood that warms the cold caves.
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