For The Lummi Girl Who Found Her
Magic In Horses
by Tiffany Midge
Every other word she spoke was horse
this, horse that,
with an other-worldly grin conjuring long salty afternoons
pony riding beneath the falling sun.
She could have been a silhouette traveling along the crimson
body of Arizona rock or circling the spiny backbones
of desert cliffs, she'd only visited in picture books.
If she told me her horse had wings
and took her on nightly flights
through the shimmering stars straight to the moon, I would have believed
her.
If she told me her horse was a blazing
ribbon of flame galloping
across the Pacific Ocean like a Jesus pony trotting on water,
running forever to save us, I would have believed her.
I could see she found her magic in
horses.
I could see each time the word horse escaped from her throat,
an eruption of stretched sinew and bones of an animal too holy
to appear in daylight reached out to capture a fringe of this world's
curtain.
She attempted to keep their tossing
heads in the corral of her heart,
their unrestrained tricks secured beneath the fence of her ribcage,
only they continued to fly out like the laughing wild spirit they
were.
Horse spirit and horse magic ignited
by the dreaming of a Lummi girl
who sang their names in the shadow of sundown.
Who offered them the sweets of her voice in ragged meadows,
who called them her own in the pale blue mornings across the
land she calls home.
One by one they leapt into the classroom
air,
and she pulled hard on their reins,
led them back in. |
