Night Rhapsody with Horses

I
Every horse head swinging against some medieval town’s gate
          sings with the weight of stones.
Decapitated carriage: it lays a foundation that persists like tongues.
          Siren call at night, let me swim with you from the wreck.

I once dreamed I wanted a horse so badly I flew to the moon to find
          one. I ran over fields of bending, whitewashed barley until I breathed
cerulean vapors, and then I levitated. The mind of a yogi in some ashram,
          sun-shielded by a fingered palm and caterpillared shirt, felt my ascent
and smiled. His toes curled into the dirt with the Knowledge and then
          the earth knew. Then it all knew: air, breath, fiber, being. The thought
was there and it reached out. Dark void, full of awareness,
          oscillating on the edge of an event. Vibration like a hoof beat and
the pony knew I was coming. Bent on escape, it heaved itself
          past sun-glint deserts of frozen life, reduced to a held breath, until
it came to the edge. Dusty Phoenician arroyo. Mythical
          geography couldn’t fence him in. When I got there, too late,
the pony—never mine—had jumped the rim and was steaming
          through the starflake like a crocus melting snow.

II
Some
galleon

awash

cracks

and
you

take

to the hoof

self prophesy

III
The horse’s lips move, back there,
swinging on that saw-split gate. Silent
riddle. It knows the truth about the

spotted handkerchief. The myth is
persistent. Water can’t wash it away.
The stain of life: False promise

whispering truths like horizon pre
dawn. The queen in the castle must
be an imposter. She laughs and her

golden hair twins itself into three
caskets. The candles gutter as a
cloud casts an absinthe light in the

chapel. The pews are stained black.
Books close. A glowworm pulses
like a fist. In the forest there have been

whispers: “You must be aware...”
She rode a black horse into town, hid
a severed pinky in her bodice and gave

a smile like damsons to entice him
into this pact. Look into her eyes:
the pupils are a boat that silently

pushes away from a dock in the night
at the same time that a hummingbird
sleeps and a breathless messenger

arrives with a yellowed scroll: “Come
to me.” Her eyelash is the moment
after the trap has sprung. The castle is

wrapped in the pall of sleep and the
silence of tongues. Still. Still like wind
through needles: “Someone must save

him.” The inside of a horse’s lips are as
perceptive as a dog’s nose. Bankrupt
frog sighing in the night. Mumbling

on the gate, snorting hints until he
strikes a chord, the horse’s thoughts
fall on ears like golden cups.

IV
The snow-covered pine forests

The leather fire pouch

Drink the absence of the bear’s eye

Waves of time as light as boulders

A stain of mistletoe

Horse song in the night

Shape of a woman

V
Sometimes now, I dream a head singing on a gate,
          or a raven on a tower wall. And sometimes there’s a noose.
And some times what’s strung up is a shepherd and
          sometimes time’s the swing that keeps swinging. But the horse
in the foreground is forever grazing. Still prophesying—ready to
          catch whatever falls: a man, a feather, a myth, this mouthful of thorns.