—
This was no neigh, no playful whinny from the barricade.
The old man moved like old men do when death is in pursuit.
Through flowered ears set like the horse’s eyes, the cries she made
Reminded him of shrieks he long considered to be mute.
But his paling haunts were not a healing of the two wars
That saddled him and reined him and pricked him with spinning spurs
(He counted all his senses as being those of the horse),
But rather small retreats without knowledge of surrenders.
And now, called again, his hustling but a shuffling,
Alive to his promise never to leave nor to forsake,
He well understood the horse’s self-imposed muffling
As it high-stepped and quarter-turned to avoid the coiled snake.
The old man palmed her nostrils and nudged her with a shoulder.
In a current of remembrance, he became a soldier.
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