Wild Mare with Thunderstorm, Numbered List, and Rogue Sestina
Lisa Lewis
1. I wanted to keep her close and fast forever.
2. But I wanted to wear her down
3. so she would carry me to the fence, over and away.
4. I would guide
5. and she would learn.
6. I would not take her blood to test in a vial.
7. I would not enter her heart with weapons.
8. Once I worried about a shadow in her eye.
9. I worried about her neck straining over a fence for green grass.
10. She is tall, heavy, she could break rusted wire like the story of my longing to ride her.
11. She could but did not.
Our work took us through hours of circling and running away. A wind shudder in the trees could shift her sullen plodding to leaps. I dodged, I gravitated, the center held me like a fist with my head stuck out.
I fell and she rose. She never fell. Her small eye surveyed me like a clock. A snake crept from the pile of scrap metal near our paralyzed roundabout.
This was a private pastime, step befalling step. The sun soared anyway, bored.
Anyone could guess the end of this story, but it hasn’t ended. Bored in our circle, I predict what glows ahead like the falseness we find shearing away when we seek the natural. Certain I’m right, I keep us both round about, occupied, I think, around and around. Around the dust, the living leaps eternal. I remember the humility of counting strides, observing the clock face of earth where each pared hoof entered the track in its space, then out.
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