Pulling off the Highway on the Way to a Deathbed to Visit a Workhorse at Rest
                                        for Amy Stephens

We are no more
than matter, our hair on the wind off the foothills
will not even be

ash hovered above a collapsing wave
off a coast harsh with bolls;
still, look how

Levi the aged Clydesdale bends his stupendous neck,
his braided mane tangled
with sunlight,

over his mess of hay and oats;
look how his hips, shuddering with arthritis,
are sturdy enough

to walk the corral's perimeter, completely
ignoring us, noble no longer, his gorgeous red hide
flicking nothing away

but heat, his fine pale fetlocks muddied
by urine and dirt,
his hooves

that worked the acres when we were young
imbedded with pebbles. And still, look
how his venerable, ache legs,

hour by rainless hour,
with all the gravity once entrusted to them, now
stamp only the dust by his water pail.

Copyright © 2009 Frannie Lindsay All rights reserved
from Mayweed
The Word Works
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission