South and west of Grand Junction, into Utah

wild horses push against the wind at the side of the road,

where the tips of grass show hints of green.

Their manes are long and twisted exhibitions of hair.

Two of them, impossibly and luminously colored, ignore their closeness to the highway

as cars blur by;

three more are a galloping pageantry flying towards no water in sight,

chasing the feathery cover of clouds.

They show themselves again, when we pass into Arizona;

dust devils spin behind them and kick up their tails.

 

Into the reservation and they are harder to see, but we find them still,

hovered under the small overlap of roof

where there are roundhouses, abandoned and effusive

and turning the thoughtful heads of my somnolent passengers.

 

Here, there are towns that are not quite towns,

and the horses turn domestic.

They are kings and queens behind fences and yards that outshine houses.

Their slick fur has been combed free of winter coats, and their muscled, racing bodies

haven’t forgotten the hot, crimson dirt where they used to run.

 

We stop on the reservation to spend the night, falling into familiarity

absorbed and welcomed like we have been here before,

like we have come back.

 

Nightfall turns cold quickly and takes away the day’s heat from the red rock and sand.

The drive behind us cases with a peace that has no words,

and in the morning my youngest awakes to tell us his dream,

 

I dreamed we were on an island; his words are the slow and groggy words that follow a

sleep without movement, sound and deep-breathing,

and we didn’t have to search for food,

and we had a good shelter.

We listen, resting our heads on our hands, watching him,

 

We had everything we needed, he said,

on that island.

For years now I have missed

the calves being born

to the mothers in the field on the other side of the fence.

 

During the day,

they stand with their bellies as wide as they are long,

moving slowly

sometimes with their unequal ribs

shifting to throw off their shuffle towards shade.

 

One will stand rocking, as mothers sometimes do in labor,

but then she will ease her way below the cottonwood,

occasionally lifting her nose to meet the flash of doves in the branches above.

Sometimes she will look at me: the whites of her eyes telling nothing,

only waiting.

In the morning, there will be two or three new calves,

altogether pointed joints and bounce,

awkwardly bent to nurse.

 

And the mothers will stand there the same,

as if nothing has changed from yesterday.

Their big, solid bodies remain indifferent following their performance overnight.

The steady arch of their necks are bent to eat grass in a shrug.

Even the calves move about with the nonchalance of having legs

and perfect tufts of fur at their fetlocks.

Their markings are like brilliant, individualized maps.

 

How ordinary that the wonder of their coming waits for night.

As if the thousand-pound mothers are designed to get on with it,

Nothing to see here but life moving forward.

 

If only,

the holiest of affairs weren’t so easily elapsed.

How often would we stop to consider then,

that something great has happened…

It is too dark in the morning still,

and I can’t find the light switch to save the banana bread

forgotten on the counter last night.

 

In the dark, I feel the untouched foil

where the cats haven’t yet found it cooling;

there is still some warmth, as my fingers reinforce the silvered seal around

the pan.

 

Outside, the horse becomes a broken statue in the corner of our yard.

The dog has started to stretch and the cats with their tiny, belled collars

weave tuneful figure eights about my legs, then move to judge me from

across the room,

waiting.

I examine the contents of the refrigerator for lunches, then slice the banana

bread for breakfast;

each move is a thoughtful delay.

 

There is the sound of the first faucet being turned on upstairs.

The sleepy water trickles through the old house somewhere down and

between the kitchen walls.

Then one by one, more slow footsteps rasp on the wooden floors above,

muffled only by the slip of area rugs where Legos are hidden and dirty socks

aren’t.

I hear the forced closure of bureau drawers, where too many clothes have

been stuffed and remain unfolded from last week’s laundry.

I know that if I go to check on them—if they are too slow and groggy, and

I’ve already spotted the bus beginning its route on the county road across

the field,

I’ll have to ask them to pick up the towels on the floor, the toys, the clothes

—to clean the toothpaste painted across the bathroom sink.

I’ll want to keep them

and I’ll want to send them off.

 

But now I linger at the base of the stairs,

making everything else wait

while I miss the way their rooms smelled when they were babies

and already miss the mess they’ll leave behind.

 

 

 

What is it that I say to my children?

Only the boring get bored.

Yet here I am, allowing those grudged words to ricochet

when the world outside is too still and good.

Please just the hint of robust cloud moving over the ridge of western mountains,

something that is strong and self-willed, and can hover over my house for some time.

Let me hear the groan of walls without the shift, the bend of windows without the break.

Find fissures in doors and windows;

run arpeggios up and down stairs.

Listen—

the wind is a radio that has just turned on,

an alarm clock set to go off at an odd hour.

It startles you upright, into the cold air

from the wearisome warmth of stale sleep.

Sometimes it is static, and sometimes you can make out a song from the opposite side of the house,

the shrill of a stretched-out exhale toward ghosts

who must be everywhere.

Outside, the leaf-barren boughs of trees stretch their arms up and down

like kneading dough. Fingers linger low with a lull and then rise again, pulling.

Nails on windows, dragging them up

and up

and open.

I like to see what you are made of.

 

Between the morning and the afternoon storm,

I drove the lunch and the dog out east

through the yet unplanted fields,

where big oil has quietly left its mark.

Cylindrical, tan vessels perch at the corners of farms on top of county roads;

underwritten barrels of the prairie promised to be smaller.

 

The radio crackles from distant lightning when I arrive,

and just as I exit the car, her age-hushed voice calls from the tiny house; a

well-built, obvious survivor of the tornado that happened nine years ago.

 

The table where we dine is pressed into a corner of her kitchen. Paint peels

from around the heating vent at her threadlike ankles, warm air pushes into

softened polyester.

 

There is a clear window overlooking a bird feeder and the darkened sky

beyond; I like to watch the weather too, I assure her. Yes–And the birds—who

flutter around the homemade contraption as we watch, despite the

metronomic bark of the dog in the car.

 

The silver blue heads of prairie blackbirds twitch their quick necks at the

window; wind stirs the incomplete pattern of chimes on a leaning pergola,

and her words are saved only for things she wants to remember:

 

her husband and the child buried in the yard,

her children and their children,

the medicine she sips from a straw,

where she keeps the unused plastic bags, and what time her evening

caregiver comes.

 

The rain starts to fall when I leave. The resigned dog has given up his voice

by then, and his face is pressed against the window;

whisker smears in the condensation.

 

She is too weak to wave from the clear window, but I can see the bright blue

of her eyes through the rain, smiling at the silly dog

and the moisture gathering on the thrilled taupe of her lawn.

 

 

Lately, I’ve been moved by too many things that move:

the chainsaw that cut the towering tree.

It fell to the ground in a struggle; layers of brilliant fall leaves like grown-out

hair put to rest.

I liked that tree.

 

And the field just north of our house.

Once it was a place to run—the golden grass of any season, really, meeting

my hips like brushing hands.

You can let it all go here, the speaking hands would say.

And there now, the Eiffel point of an oil rig is a baritone hum at night. Constant

and constantly lit.

I liked that field.

 

Even the backyard snakes who’ve met an untimely death

and the mice and wasps and spiders; each symmetric stripe and incisive

pointed ear; each delicate, specific detail formed flawless and inimitable.

The flowers.

 

And the doves who dive before the cars, and the raccoons and cats, and the

grasshoppers we never see, but beseige the feathergrass and winter wheat,

flitting for brief seconds in the air before they can’t.

I’ve loved them all.

 

But with greater force still,

I’ve discovered that I will love them again.