It's a new day. Brio is being trained
To be less human, less the clueless,
Catastrophizing Lord of no domain
And more a horse, happy to be
Eating grain, helping us to see
The highlands as if for the first time.
But it's a process. The black gloves
Must be worn. Sister Hollywood
Must be called in to script doctor
Our permissive inclinations, and do
The thing all books advise:
Show him the road to hit, without fuss,
Without the shadow of our soft touch.
No horse therapist, she whispers to us
To trust the boundaries will keep us safe
Oh, and to tell the horse where he got
His breakfast. As she taught the Gypsy
Vanner who wouldn't pull no cart.
As beautiful as a tinsel star, invisible eyes
And hair like nebulae, she's been a diva
Since day one, but she is misunderstood,
At least that's what she tries to tell you,
Or her feathers do, as they hang
Like white beads over a fille de joie's door.
She lays down now for a 1,000-lb roll
Then looks at me with ever-inquisitive eyes
As horses always do, expecting something.
We disappoint again and again, but they
Find themselves in the paces we push them
Through, as boss who can't be nickled.
There's no logic to taking control. Raw power
Over another is born from the crudest,
Most illegal gestures imaginable
But they always work, and no court in the world
Will hear the complaint, and the horse is compliant,
Running as if he's found his purpose finally,
Under an implied whip. And he nuzzles us
When he's done, the closest thing to an apology
We can muster. Orphaned children typically veer
From feared abuse on others, and never realize
Attention is all the horse desires, what one
Never knew one deserved.
It's about interrupting his surveils for attention
By ignoring them, the neglected learning
To neglect. The scenario, for both horse and rider
Is to run out of the fear, of being alone, because
There's nothing left when it's done, but the far view,
The summit of presence, where the vultures fly over.
He thinks his ideas matter, but they don't. Most horses,
Most people, never learn this. They think their opinion
Is their own, not fear of the grass or the cameras.
They capture it now, for sudden groms who pose
As a newly mellow, flat-affect-faced Brio
Passes by in his Christmas hat.
