The Horse Behind Barbed Wire

Driving home from work I spotted
A poker-faced gelding standing
Motionless by the road behind

Thin, pale, lifeless steel barbed-wire
Entangled with bare, sinuous
Bush and bramble. I don’t know what

Caused me pause. The riderless saddle
Burdened upon his back? The brown
Leather chafed dull from the blue-jeaned

Weight of mankind. Could it have been
The pale sore below his rippling
Rib cage, pocked and suppurated

By the spur’s ceaseless insistence?
Maybe it was the bridle strapped
Across his long face, as if to

Hinder him from munching on the
Winter-burnt grass. But perhaps it
Was that he just looked straight ahead,

His empty eyes overcast with
Meditation, determination,
As if he were lost in a
Reverie of feral dreams
And hope.

Revelations of the Chanterelle

Counting Autumn’s ruddy liver spots
Freckled upon the hairs of the meadow-bier,
I came upon a troupe of golden chanterelles,
Their trumpet horns pointing heavenward
For the dawdling clouds to hear.

What requiem they bellowed I could not tell.
So placing a curious ear upon the topmost tier,
My body oozing through the damp of the dew,
I listened for the earth’s reverberating groans
Of Demeter’s harvested grief of one so dear.

But what it was that I did hear–
A dirge, a hymn, the babble of a seer–
I do not know, only that I was inhearsed
Within the cool grass as squirrels rustled over the boughs
Fervidly collecting hickory nuts against their winter fears.