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Stamping a hindleg twice when I walked into the barn.
I remember crossing four of Hervie's fields,
To watch the colt being born; past the sheep that ran in circles all day long,
Cowbirds gathered in the ash tree by the barn, small as flies,
Coils of electrical fencing, the smell
Of ammonia & fire, how she bucked when I got close,
Her thighs shivering open, a coarse, golden static blazing the haydust.
Once, as a boy, they laid me in a bathtub of ice
To break my fever.
The bird with a tail of so many bright colors that whispered its heat into my ear
Was my only friend. Not those tall shapes
Those tall shapes moving so far above me, but a blue ripple,
The shadows of birds passing across my stomach.
& then it appeared, as if drifting: a tiny, half-formed, blue face.
Recently undrowned from its birthwaters, almost human.
How small I felt as a ripple when the ice had melted,
The ice that give its form to my heat...
& the mare shifted, & pushed, a black muscle rippling
As her child eased down through several human arms
Down there where my long black hair floated
Like a horse's drowned mane. Snuffed tongue of my fever still licking me,
Lay there like driftwood in the straw for the mare to lick, worn smooth
By a current, thin legs buckled to one side in the August light
Licking its last heat from my forehead-no,
All we could think to do was cut & tie the cord anyway,
That was my mother's hand.
Struggled, turned blue, lifted a crinkled pink ear, the chest swelled just once.
What I remember is my ear, suddenly blotted open
As they pulled me up into the screaming of cicadas.
Some blind weight. A blue palm pressing down.
The oaks, lashing like breakers to a sudden calm,
& my temples were born again
Grass rushing, a single ripple from the barn
& the other horses shifted & stamped in their stalls,
The ash tree tossed open in the wind and breathed.
& the world filled with that small death,
As the smell of rain fills a forest before it breaks.
Through the cracked barn-door you can hear it,
Breath for breath across the yard--the colt
Pushing itself out, still folded blind, root & glazed vein,
Slap of its side half-swallowed, I gasp
As if drawn from water.
All they can think to do is leave me here,
lit by chaff on the floor.
The dream I'm breathed out
Over water, my heart dancing
Like a small flame on the surface, I'm lifted
& set back down, in a body, a barn,
& then the colt coming out crippled,
Limb for bent limb, I try to lift it; I'm folded,
Then opening, then rising up slowly
Like haydust, like nothing at all into the stillness,
The heavy light of late summer.