Above the forests,
Past tundra,
Upon cold ice,
We join hands in secret there,
Dance
And decorate a merry May pole
With many hangman’s nooses.
We sit on front porches in the dim light,
Talking about everything and smiling.
Frozen beneath the ice, almost forgotten,
Sharing our dreams and nightmares,
Un-consious,
Frenzied brothers and sisters sleep restlessly,
Dazed and chained,
Unshod and bootless,
Riding wild mustangs
Over rough, icy pavement
Across wintertime park benches
Behind iron and the walls
Breathing smoke,
Clutching coffee,
Rash and oblivious,
Chasing the moon.
As we finally look up at our moon
Hanging low, by the horizon,
Watch her distant, cold light,
We again begin to remember our horses.
"Where is my horse?" somebody thinks to wonder.
"Where is my horse?" she asks in increasing terror,
Her breath visible, swirling tendrils in icy wind.
"What horse?" I reply lazily.
I look up from an angel
I made in the snow.
"This horse, silly!"
Someone points at cold, thin air with a mitten
And grins.
"My horse is in the barn,"
A gentle teenage girl asks, "Isn’t it?"
"My barn is gone.
"It burned down."
A bundled man still remembers.
His warm smile cannot hide
The pain the memory causes.
"And the horses don’t come back, ever.
"They get away. You will know that."
Our eyes track the moon’s path,
But our feet rest solidly on ice.
A woman in collapsed sorrow on her knees
And cradling something very long gone
Screams through tears, "Damn the horses!
"Where is my son? I don’t know him anymore."
Our memory of horses soon fades
And we join others,
Gathering around warm fire in a barrel,
Stamping our feet as if still dancing,
And talking about everything.
Laughing and weeping,
We raise empty barns, and drinking cold beer afterwards,
Smile in silent wonder at our works,
Standing on the ice,
Shivering regretfully,
In our cold domain,
And dreaming always
Of an end to pain,
Of sweet peace, silence,
About lost horses.