When I began to read The End of Horses, I enjoyed the first poem immediately. It’s about riding a horse bareback, and if one has never done that, this poem will be a pleasurable facsimile with its quick three line stanzas and tempo reminiscent of a gallop changing landscapes constantly. It brought back childhood memories for me jumping over streams and ducking overhanging branches as they came at us, riding horses through the mountain, with nary a scratch, which is the luck of children.
Galloping Double, Bareback
Down sandy edges of paved country roads without helmets, bareback, the sisters clung
to each other, to the horse, to tree- lined ways that snake around and through, as if going somewhere
were not the goal. Their bodies twinned, hair wind-whipped—the triple rocking of legs pounding,
the leaping beat of hooves. The girls struggled to stay the horse rippling though them like storm.
Wind battered trees that framed the hush of birds, silenced by their galloping—the muddy paths,
the mourning dove, soft-eyed windows of distant houses. Head down, the quieted horse ploughed through grasses.
his massive form sleek, willowy. So much did they long for the beast’s velvet nose to be buried in their arms.
“Galloping Double, Bareback” anticipates the empathetic poems that follow and draw us into their natural world where every creature is equal and worthy of notice and attention, and we realize too, if things don’t change soon, these fine serious poems may also be harbingers of our doom. In the Vimeo below, Margo Taft Stever reads some of these poems. Enjoy.
The End of Horses is in three sections. I’ve typed out the following poems from the second and third sections. “Galloping Double, Bareback” is from the first section of the book.
Barefoot Clearing
Outside, troubled family spills over the driveway
that I walk down, barefoot, kicking my toe against
each stone firmly lodged in its own cement
Catalpa leaves dampen my arms, and a clearing
appears halfway between my eyes and the moon.
Slug Traps
When raccoons begin their nightly rounds rummaging through the fillings of garbage cans, slugs quit the dark undersides of leaves, leaving the emperor beetle, the common worm, for the sleek surfaces of lettuce.
Snails without shells, sliding along the earth and its roots, these cumbrous gypsies house a human frailty, thirsting for an unknown odor, a formless state. On a pie plate
full of Pabst, from all corners they converge, forsaking their tracks of slime.
Locked Ward II
Two Canada geese and three goslings crib grass in a corner patch triangulated by Redcoat Lane, Tower Hill Road, and the reservoir.
The goslings nip green shoots in their narrow constriction, strangulated strip—downy feathers fluttering in summer haze.
The geese hover over them, protecting from menacing cars, blurring by at breakneck speed, drivers cursing out windows—pests, vermin.
They turn their radios up—“love, oh careless love…” But at dawn, no cars, no noise, all drivers sleeping, the parents bring
their goslings across the vacant road to teach them how to swim.
Dance of the Jackrabbit
Jackrabbits by moonlight jump queerly, in circles. They leap, turn, scatter— pirouettes askew. Moonlight is the force, the jackrabbit the medium, following language under the earth. Earth worms roll over the words. The slow sounds steam.
Hum of fur, of skin underneath, hind legs thumping, always thumping against the unforgiving ground.
The End of Horses is published by Broadstone Books. You can check it out here:
