– by Magda Sokolowski
Like a jackrabbit the desert reared up
against the high-cold in green-grey clots.
The cheat of grass, the sheen of ice-ground,
dense & the dull straightaway of road,
the welcome turn – sudden & slow
to find them there.
Three of them: feral horses.
We stopped the car, out there, nowhere –
our stares met theirs –
at the side of the road. The frozen glow
of white around their mouths,
the slow blink of a single moment,
a smart brown eye,
& the freezing breath of all of us –
a coalescent heat-cloud.
Their family looked at ours
& then the shudder-start
in the hind quarter of what looked to be
the weakest one, the barbed-wire twitch
of scars on its flank, the lattice of fence
around our shared life.
I knew right then I wanted you –
the whole of it & then they ran.
