Horse Kitchen

 

What is the rhythm of the thundering hooves, the jogging mind with a burn.

An earth rebound of deep and tiny releases like chiropractic of the animal spine.

Tiny house in the pines where wind and air billow the curtains and laundry.

The field horse harnessed, the house slaves bored and absent minded,

The history latent another ten years in an afternoon.

 

Talk of the heat turns to talk of town, the broken wings and dusty coat,

The springs of rust, the hollow of poison ivy and smoke tarnishing the sunlight orange.

Reel in another desperate fish moving air in its gills until it’s dead on the stone.

Stone, with its film of slapped mud / blood.

 

Never pure,

Always the ocean rushing in its silt, the rain putting moisture and mold in the powder,

The tree fruit quick to rot where the birds find it, clawing tracks as

On water that everywhere disappear.

We are gone soon, from the scene edited away, elided, elevated as air,

Warm as rising souls,

As carrion birds on the battle field surveilling.

Pushing up through ground the uneven mounds of the dead.

 

Fighter buried with his gloves.

Brides turned in at noon and back to work by 2:00, bending in the afternoon.

So many rushes at the gate and lane,

A little walk in the finery.

 

The jewels hanging from night trees,

Her eyes gentle as breezes by the window.

Her skin tight and fresh as pie.

Her steam rising.

The fire of the drum going red in the heart,

The four corners, the majesty of colored horsemen,

Their dust and dusk and dawn.

Such in the eyes of a child, full of fear,

Finding the distances of hope closing in,

Her memoir cut short as school.

Her friends busy as typewriters riding fast horses on cobblestones,

The hammers blazing, the nation taking its long drink of water from her darkening soul.

 

Her undoing red yarn, the mending dress from the tear of barbed wire.

Remember running in the tall grass.

See us piecing together on the broad flat bed, the quilt pieces and honey bread,

Of the oven still warm, the floor boards still chalky with flour.

Sun burn and sun bonnet, how can we shield ourselves?

Wind storm and dust bowl, rent and debt, how can we be free?

 

Tight rope soul kitchen of belly buttons and toes,

Suckling lambs and business blades of axes and handles blistering calluses, sleeves rolled up,

Muscles tense and dark as iron.

Measure up the possible fare.

Buttered peas, ham fat, bread.

The dry and the wet come together merged as                         

Horsemen of sky melt the moon maidens of world and trail their pearls

In iridescent eyes of unborn pools resolute and found

In the caverns of the future.

Just where we left ourselves, harvested,

Holed up with our kin and our dead

In the maw between world and mouth speaking sweetly, quietly,

Keeping time with a tapping stick to match the pawing of the horses

On the dust all around,

The motes air born

Settling on someone’s sleeping lashes.

 

 

 

 

 

By Rolf Stavig

8-29-2020