The tack rooms are deserted,
A red woodpecker sings
Clinging to the pole
As the silence grows loud.
There is always room for a solo voice
When the stalls are in the shade,
The prints grow deep in the arena.
It's like humans are never here
With the buckets empty, the chairs in sun,
The racks and posts rattling in the wind,
Or that I'm even one, pulled back
From a fly mask, silent with my eyes,
Hearing foreign tongues decide
The higher plan, of which I’m not a part,
The joyous grackles, dropping to worms,
The squirrels running for the fun of it.
Mouths fill with alfalfa, shaking dusty hides
At the parliament of flies that rewrite the rules
For the few short days they are alive.
The sky is so clear any one thing could break it.
It's only held together by blue,
Maybe a feather, a quill pen cloud
For something not even a memory
But a thought that it's been felt
Somewhere, the pain of this being,
Never enough, always too much,
Waiting and willing ...
Then one by one they come,
The hay man, the farrier,
The lady with the hat,
Like pieces of me
Mysteriously put in place.
I can't hear the voices,
At least what they are saying,
But the ranch is alive, now,
This invisible hour
With my own being --
How far did I go
To never leave,
To get away?
The hay truck comes up,
A man and his girlfriend, Sunday
Smiles, offering the timothy
To the mule and donkey
And I, no less than them,
Outside their pen,
Devour what the gloves
Dropped down.
