Poem: Transfer of Owners

This poem was written in 1994 at a point when I was going through a traumatic time: financial difficulties, 8 funerals in 18 months (including my Dad), and then the worst of all… Losing my horse.

I felt your breath
soft on my neck
myriad memories
tickling my mind like
whiskers
falling
from clippers

Luminous eyes
glazed with the day’s work
and the field is
dust
flicking through the stall
washed with bespeckled light
and the thrum of horse flies
and the stench of sweat
and the buzz of Osters
trimming, trimming…

The night is vacant now
scents of cedar and straw
drift through the barn into
my dreams–
twice-wet feet cross the stream
to another’s pasture

Your eyes–my eyes
stare through steel bars,
a stall door of my design
locked against my entry

Related Images: