Wild Horses

Sunlit panoramic, landscape painting

Sprawling prairie scruff

Dotted plains of mares in waiting

Handpicked if they’re enough

Periodical time, the men arrive

And the horses know it’s soon

They’ll scan the herd and they’ll decide

One lucky mare to choose

The horses devise together

Their wisdom, their fabled “right way”

To achieve their leads made of leather

They hush their tone and they say

“Clover fields are my secret

Makes for shiny manes, smaller frames

I eat this, and I know I’ll be weak but

Slight setback for longer term gain.”

They are there, she stands beside

One of them and yet apart

She listens and yet her voice inside

Can’t take their words to heart

“I don’t think I understand,” she says

“I’d rather have my strength and be alone-”

“Be quiet, meet their demands,” they say

“There’s more power in being owned.”

The others muse on about men in hats

The storms that they could help weather 

Within her, the small part that craves just that

She thinks: is she any better?

Truth is, she’d known a man before

Eyes gradient like her sky

He’d said that life exceeded barn doors

He’d agreed she was meant to be wild

And they’d meet together at dusk

To watch the orange sun set

And they’d look on past the dust

And he’d say through cigarettes,

“I can take you far from here, you know

I can keep you safe, keep you free

And you can still be you, you know

The world is ours if you’re with me.”

Now she takes in that same view

Mix of stupidity and longing

Remembers every evening rendezvous 

Misled myth of belonging

She’d seen that man again

Plowing on the farm upstream

Mares in tow, white picket fence

She watched him live the dream

And she observes her herd now

The effort she religiously opposes

They groom themselves into what’s allowed

And she watches as they get chosen

So she stands in grassy expanse

Sees their bridles carefully fastened 

Beside her, horizon of gentle romance

Before her, their horseshoes are fashioned

In her mind, she envisions the clouds

Reminds herself: keep your composure

Eyes fall to examine the ground

Head down, she picks at the clover.