Above the forests,
Past tundra,
Upon glaciers,
We join hands in secret,
Dance in solitude around our merry maypole
Festooned with faded streamers,
Tied with hangman’s knots.
We huddle on the frigid ground in the dim light,
Talking about everything and smiling,
Glad for true company.
Frozen beneath the ice, almost forgotten,
Sharing our waking dreams, our nightmares,
But un-conscious,
Frenzied brothers and sisters sleep restlessly,
Dazed and chained,
Unshod, bootless in snow,
Riding fiery mustangs
Over rough, icy pavement,
Stretched across wintertime benches,
Behind iron and walls,
Breathing smoke,
Clutching coffee,
Rash and oblivious,
Chasing the moon.
When we, too, then look up at that moon
Hanging low by the horizon,
Watch her distant, cold glow,
We remember again our own horses,
Once so wild, now gone, and we mourn.
"Where is my horse?" somebody thinks to wonder.
"Where is my horse?" she asks again, but aloud
In her increasing fear.
Her breath is visible, swirling tendrils in icy wind.
"What horse?" I reply bitterly.
"I don’t remember. I don’t have to."
Lying, laying down,
In a fresh snowy angel.
"This horse, silly!"
Another snowbody points at cold, thin air with a mitten
And grins hollowly.
"My horse is where it always was,"
A gentle teenage girl speaks plaintively.
"Isn’t it? Isn’t it?#8364;??"
A bundled man still remembers.
"My barn is gone.
"Burned down, all ashes."
A warm smile cannot hide
The pain the memory causes.
"And the horses don’t come back. Ever.
"They just get away. They don’t come back."
A woman in crumpled sorrow, on her knees
And cradling something very long absent
Screams through tears,
"Damn the horses! Where is my son?
"I don’t know him anymore."
And our eyes all trace the moon’s path,
But our feet still rest solidly on ice,
Fortunately or unfortunately.
By and by memory fades again,
And distracted eyes return to this world of ice,
A barren homeland.
And we join the others
Already gathered around warm fire in a barrel
In stamping our feet as if still dancing
And talking about nothing
Or telling our stories
And laughing and weeping.
Together, raising new barns all too empty.
Drinking cold beers afterward,
And smiling in sudden wonder at our work,
We can listen for a returning drum of hooves,
Cast long moonshadows.
But we hear only sighs and the wind.
We stand solid on this ice,
Shivering regretfully,
In our splendid, cold domain,
And dream always
Of an end to the pain
And the sweetness of peace,
Of touching her pale face
As we should have,
About lost horses,
And this bond of bondage.