Old Horses Make Whisper

With our pale minds leaning

toward the first few minutes

in the Year of the Horse

we watched last year slip away

through shed doors and little windows—

a dim-eyed groundling

escaping the lifting light.

And with its long-tailed leaving

it took a woman who stepped between two boats

and disappeared

it took foxes on trampolines

and bears walking upright

it took the children of Yakutia

snow-tramping to school

armed with hatchets and wolf fear.

And then it took long-tethered robots

snooking the Black Sea’s floor

for medieval carracks—

stoved holds filled with lost horses, pelts and people.

And it took the Mars rover

climbing Naukluft Plateau of Lower Mount Sharp

humming “Sunday Morning Coming Down”

over and over those friendless, red sands.

And it took a priest of half-believers

and a recipe for reindeer tongue

(though not the tip as it compels one to lie).

And before the new year rushed us on

all paper horns, promise

and barn-sour futures the old year left behind

our badly-healed bones

our torch songs our wander toward muscle and shovel

while somewhere rusted slag loosened from a hill.

A war begat a war.

Trees ignited. Sand glassed.

And five of a newly damned species slept.

Still we rattle on

opening the shut forcing the tight-folded

because it’s early January

and the days to come

like all loose things

stirred up, made bright can only escape

up and out into this wintery air.