Wind blowing through his mane
up onto my hands which hold two reins loosely.
We ride, or I ride and he carries, down a gravel road
chunks of itself missing
after log trucks rush by with their fallen victims.
All around us, before us and in front of us,
lay fallen leaves, dead on arrival.
He stops to ask me with his ears and a twinge of his neck,
"May I have one?"
"No," I say with tight leg, "we still have a ways to go."
And we move on,
the flies sitting in the corners of his eyes
which he blinks away, only to have them return seconds later.
With each gust of wind I watch his mane's journey,
left, then right, left, right again.
I lose my sense of place as I watch,
waiting for the course strands to settle again.
We near our destination,
a small valley with abandoned house,
nothing left but an old satellite dish,
and a gate falling down, bent in age.
The hay has been cut, bundled and hauled off to old barns
leaving us this empire of grass, and a backdrop of ancient trees.
We hear the true collaboration of trees and wind
with branches and space humming, hissing, and groaning .
It's not a greeting, or a playful song -
It's a resonance.
Ignoring skin, it sinks down into the flesh and then the bone,
while the heart skips beats trying to keep up.
Haunting, it reminds of a past time
that we can not get to.
