Twenty-Three Poems about Horses

A horse has a mind. I think
It does. Not a mind like ours.
Our minds are reins, bits, and whips.
The mind of a horse is plain,
But it can be wild or kind.
A horse will never explain.
A horse makes up its own mind.

~

Nothing much has to happen
For time to gallop along.
Time is rhythmic, after all,
And can smoothly lift its hooves
All at once from level ground,
Flights inside monotony
Riders might not feel at all.

~

The love of what’s out of place
Because it makes you stronger,
Because it feels like magic,
Because it’s just so gorgeous—
That’s why the love of horses
In forested India,
In imperial China.

~
I pass the roadside ponies
Stuck in the muddy paddock
Under runty cottonwoods
And wave at their big, brown eyes.
Almost every time I think,
Better to be raised for dudes
On vacation or for war?

~

The nobility we see
In horses, did we see it
When we only hunted them?
Or did they become noble
Once we nobly mounted them?
Once our nobles rode on them
I think horses lost something.

~

Let’s say that horses aren’t us.
We paralleled each other,
Both adapting to open
Country as the grasslands spread.
They evolved hooves from digits,
While our kin evolved digits
From tools by analogy.

~
Even before we rode them,
Poor horses were used for tools—
At Boxgrove, the earliest
Bone tools ever discovered
Were made from the skeleton
Of a horse hunted for meat
Then used to shape fresh flint blades.

~

I would like to love the horse.
I think it’s admirable
To admire them, if you can
Admire and be kind to them,
Not work them to death, not ride
Them to death or off to death
On them. But I’m no houyhnhnm.

~

I heard a whinny today
From my back porch, where road noise
From out-of-sight trucks and cars
Predominates. I have no clue,
Between desert and golf course,
Walled yards, small roads, and highway,
Who would ride in on a horse?

~

Sometimes I see the tourists
Jolting along single file
Down canyons and up mesas,
Saddled on plodding ponies.
I’ve been a tourist myself,
And no country was stranger
To me than that horsehide back.

~

It’s a proud way for humans
To assess other humans—
How well can you ride a horse?
It’s power, prowess, knowledge
Important to knights, actors,
Stunt performers, cavalry,
Cowboys. Transcendent humans.

~

What luck to have discovered
Submission would lead to herds
Larger than any wild ones!
Species who never learned this
Were wiped out. Central Asian
Steppe ponies serve purposes
In breeds on six continents.

~

You think you might imagine
Our thoughts, how we are feeling.
You might. You might get lucky.
But only in words. We don’t
Live like you, ghosts in our heads.
Drop the first-person. Horses
Are other than humans. Just.

~

Four horses without bridles
Or saddles graze the long grass
On a slope of summer hill,
Neither wild nor put to work—
Pets, almost, but on display.
Will horses ever not mean
Wealth to whoever owns them?

~

I’m impressed with the bronze ones
And the marbles even more.
How those men must have loved them,
Seen in them perfect totems
Of beauty as pure power.
So much longing invested
In invulnerable flesh.

~

Li He was born in a year
Of the Horse. He lived only
A brief life of many poems,
Twenty-three about horses,
Rich with allusions and tropes
Suggesting he mused a lot
On undervalued poets.

~

Will they ever go extinct
While we who hunted, herded,
Bred, broke, and rode them survive?
Are they at least as secure
As us now, even ignored?
Or will herds shrink to endlings
And die if they don’t serve us?

~

Despite our avidity
For horses—how we race them,
Name them, fictionalize them—
See what invisible props
They’ve been in novels, movies,
And television series.
Think we’re naming us, not them?

~

How many famous horses
Even are there, anymore?
Today’s fantasy heroes
Can mostly fly on their own.
We’ve kept a few famed, named swords,
But who would spur Seabiscuit
While wielding Excalibur?

~

You want to get in our heads
To see an image of you,
Complained Bamboo Harvester.
Clever Hans was doing sums
Meanwhile in a dusty stall.
Senator Incitatus,
However, withheld his vote.

~

Buttermilk and Golden Cloud
Left only replica lamps
And cast-iron descendants,
Which sold well for quite a while.
Their hides were stretched on plaster
And foam and exhibited
For selling themselves so well.

~

Such is fame, a human game,
Like war, racing, pony rides,
And chieftains’ gold-crammed kurgans.
Humans have nothing but games,
Which define humans. Horses,
By contrast, can thrive on grass
As soon as games release them.

~

The wild horse populations
Grow fast in America,
Like a cycle completed,
Equus from this continent
To this continent returned,
Content to conquer again.
Conquering means surviving.