A Dream Sequence of Horses in Five Movements

One night sleeping, dreams pressing heavily

down on me, I become a child, wandering

lost in the vast dark of the American

wilderness. I wander into a paddock,

somewhere in Rochester, Minnesota,

and see the horses, shining like spectres

in the glade: wisps of horse, crystal outlines

in the moonlight as it filters through their manes.

They bray with bated lungs and nay

when I disturb the scene, parting the air

with my presence. In a quiet prayer,

I ask them to forgive me, to have me,

and they both bow: setting aside their iron pride,

and I am happy, I am proud. I climb over 

the fence, over the stoop, and approach

the more golden of the two, bending

to tug at a handful of dewed grass, tenebrous

and tense with the touch of moisture. She

approaches, nuzzling into my palm and taking

the feed: she could have bitten me right there,

stirring me from my dream, but she didn't.

Eyes peaceful and yet watchful, she chews.

If horses could smile, hers would be a rainbow,

showering a spectrum. I look down

at my hands, and they've started cracking.

I glow a light violet, the smell of flowers eeking

out from me. I have become a nocturne, spilling out

fragrant notes. The horses champ, standing there 
still, glistening, and listen.

                                           ***

Now I am a young man, a horse wrangler, on

the sprawling hinterland of 1850s frontier West:

to the East, a dream of Democracy and ahead

of me a peopled land to be unpeopled: Indians

to steal from, settlements to come: railyards,

whiskey bars, tenements, steeples.

It is darkness before dawn, and I have been

on the trail of the horses for days. On the back of

my steed, in Navaho territory. A star is rising

hungry, gulping down the blackness and lights,

breakfasting, turning on its brother, the night.

And before the red tears raw and erupts, there

in the glare cresting a hill, in the morning twilight,

I see the quiet herd. I am about to charge, lasso

at my side, saddles firm around my feet, my steed

tense with understanding, charged with knowledge

of the pursuit: less equals and more my inferior,

implicit in being reigned, implicated with me.

And in the growing grounding of man and horse,

the morning now stirring, I see amongst the animals

a man, walking quietly and proud, as if his feet are

hooves, and the horses know. His feathered hairpiece

bristles gently in the breeze and he seems to put the

beasts at ease. Quietly, I watch and weigh: 

I'll stay, and wait it out another day.

                                           ***

The sands shift, and now I see a woman

riding a horse by the sea, its four legs

lapped at by the water, scalloped in the tide.

The air washes them both and the sea is a gulping,

the horse sparkling like salt crystals, its mane

the white rush of waves cresting and breaking.

Sleeping and yet waking, dream pouring into reality,

the woman’s wet golden locks streak the wind,

the white silk of her dress caresses this velvet horse.

His troughs of muscle quiver like waves on his bones,

his breath the long and steady pull and release of the moon,

and the two of them swim through an ocean of air.

                                  ***

And now I am an old man

at the races, watching

the horses,

recalling

my youth: 
when I was a boy

uncorrupted by 
brutality,

when there was no nullity,

when the beauty 
overcame me.

And I remember 
a dream of horses,

a dream within a dream:

feeding them cubes of ice,

their soft warm slobbering tongues

pouring forth from them,

their heads like the heads of eagles.

So gentle, they could have bitten

me, but they didn’t.

They were so good and strong.

And now I only come to watch them

in order to place a bet,

to watch the hopeless crowd

feast on the American Dream:

earning and losing, betting and winning,

and carrying on the same broken tune.

10/1 on Chariots of Fire:

I put down five.

A scotch on the rocks.

I sit in the stands and watch.

The long shot. A good runner.

He comes in first. The eagles are no more.

The racing pigeons endure.

But how magnificent.

How terribly sad, and sadly
beautiful.

                                  ***

I stir from my sleep

and I am child, young man, woman

horse, old man. But I am twenty-three,

to put a number on it. I turn on my side

hoping this turn will send me under

the waves, back into dreams

where horses endure, strong and wise

and silent. Just let me dream, please.

And I crack and roll across the 
hills: thunder on four hooves:

I am the horse now. I am the hills.

I am the sky now. I have been set loose.