Chance glance into dance into music into poetry,
The elegance of a tail snapping at flies.
They meet
Like two chess knights, expressing all love in the curving
Of their necks.
Light on his feet, in perfect symmetry
With crisp gait, tail and head upright.
They turn in a circle
And stop on a dime
While lonely mares look jealously on.
They turn to surprise and amuse and adore
In fitful, fretful steps
On white hooves,
Each side releasing into a blink
In the lungewhip of their desensitizing presence,
Two foils,
Paint and Arab, to the essential currents of magnet and bolt,
Eyes like a silent movie couple
While Joey the resident mountain lion saunters through
And even the rabbits pay him no mind.
Their canter turns to gallop turns to dust
As their strict perfection tests the perfect afternoon
Its largess.
But they are only the entire universe
In their dance,
So it only goes as far as the darkening hills,
So beautiful whenever you need it, and invisible when
We want to learn it again.
How can horses dance like that
Without us knowing?
