GRATEFUL BEASTS

Judy Rock*

We’ve come back to the farm—

to the animal responsibility.

To haul their hay, scarce and heavy, still breathing,

Into the loft of the second floor—where we’re building

a temple to summer.

Back to the horse in the straw

and the straw in the water—

black to the block of salt.

You should walk in with us, over

the black floor where the mulehearted pump

sweats to lift ice water. Once like a rose a newborn

mouse curled unawares in the thwart of a rafter.

Its veins, its minute purple heart.

The sickle makes like a fingernail moon

above the pony manger…manger, to eat,

though the timothy is not yet ready—it moves and murmurs

Under its blue-green shakos.

Have you seen these grateful beasts—

chewing through their lines, leaning on the wire

rolling and rolling any bare place

into a wallow   to be free from the dust

of the stall and the stale air?

You should cling to the halter like a fool like I do

when the pony tears off

Through the greenbrier.  For you, Dev, she was a circus pony, you two

taking jump after jump.

And we have never gone into the evening field

to call them home by name and the hour

Without waiting for their murmurs and softest cells.

To know the mills and throngs of what we are.

You should walk in with us after dark

--through the clanking gate, and up the yellow-pine planks

hands and flake and breath of clover.

You should stand there with us awhile

the night’s ration given

the battered pails filled.

*poet from USA

work of artist Gitta Pardoel