Thursday, October 16, 2025

Green of the Tumbleweed

Everything is different. The timeline
Has shifted. It rained. There are roosters.
Nobody really knows what to do,
That is, with the horses.

Yet to pretend one particular
Mud-covered arena is the one,
We all do it, but I, for one, know nothing,
Like that crow of the cock

Not to be eaten by coyotes
For the children who adore
The chickens that help the horses
Somehow with their fly problem

I suppose. It's getting dark,
The purple dapples at grass time,
The buckskin runs in circles.
There are no rules

But everyone observes them,
Even the mules, who disappeared
To an alternate universe for a few days
But have returned, no worse or different at all.

It's for me what to make of it. The lights
Have come on. Brio is rolling. The winter 
Coats make all the horses shine
In water-logged splendor.

They have never been anxious - it was me -
Never wary - me as well - never used
The illusion of love to procure food,
Became lonely after I passed,

That was work I needed to do,
Dredge and observe to let its hold
Go. It took me back to worlds I wanted
To re-do, people I wanted to recognize

When the land itself has been Mandela'ed,
The docks in different spaces of the harbor,
All the buildings moved around. The purple
Lights are not the way they were before,

The car sounds are something other,
A gentle crying from the sea. The horses
Sound like walruses, their clomps
A ticking clock in antiquity

Like that quarterhorse the girl rode
Under the lights in the wet, wet arena
Where they run all odds every second.
It's all been collected,

Culled and scored, and ready now
To be observed and forgotten,
For new music demands the airwaves,
It's as simple as that.

The music creates its ear
And the truth surrounds that solitary note
Like an army to carry infinity 
One funky gallop at a time.

The veil is missing, its black lace
Is only missed by those squirreled
In its attic of memories, as
The moon insists on coloring

Every souvenir in the catalogue,
To render it irrelevant, 
Never really eyed,
What is new in its next disguise.

The perimeter has melted.
I can no longer use the horse's sight.
The hard work of mud leads to shaping
The soft voice of waiting clay.