Horses in Snow

They are a gift I have wanted again.

Wanted: One moment in mountains

when winter got so cold

the oil froze before it could burn.

I chopped ferns of hoarfrost from all the windows

and peered up at pines, a wedding cake

by a baker gone mad. Swirls by the thousand

shimmered above me until a cloud

lumbered over a ridge,

bringing the heavier white of more flurries.

I believed, I believed, I believed

it would last, that when you went out

to test the black ice or to dig out a Volkswagon

filled with rich women, you’d return

and we’d sputter like oil,

match after match, warm in the making.

Wisconsin’s flat farmland never approved:

I hid in cornfields far into October,

listening to music that whirled from my thumbprint.

When sunset played havoc with bright leaves of alders,

I never mentioned longing or fear.

I crouched like a good refugee in brown creeks

and forgot why Autumn is harder than Spring.

But snug on the western slope of that mountain

I’d accept every terror, break open seals

to release love’s headwaters to unhurried sunlight.

Weren’t we Big Hearts? Through some trick of silver

we held one another, believing each motion the real one,

ah, lover, why were dark sources bundled up

in our eyes? Each owned an agate,

marbled with anguish, a heart or its echo,

we hardly knew. Lips touching lips,

did that break my horizon

as much as those horses broke my belief?

You drove off and I walked the old road,

scolding the doubles that wanted so much.

The chestnut mare whinnied a cloud into scrub pine.

In a windless corner of a corral,

four horses fit like puzzle pieces.

Their dark eyes and lashes defined by the white.

The colt kicked his hind, loped from the fence.

The mares and a stallion galloped behind,

lifting and leaping, finding each other

in full accord with the earth and their bodies.

No harm ever touched them once they cut loose,

snorting at flurries falling again.

How little our chances for feeling ourselves.

They vanished so quickly—one flick of a tail.

Where do their mountains and moments begin?

I stood a long time in sharpening wind.

By, Roberta Hill Whiteman
Snow Horse

Chasing Color

Today I’m chasing color

a cursory fugitive through invisible towns,

snow blind and losing sight of the mountains

letting myself vanish

into backroads.

I stop for gas in a microscopic town

the friendliest in America, it’s undeniable

where I see only the restful eyes of an old man

readjusting his gloves to scrape the ice off my window.

The honeyed wrinkles of ladies inside

say that if he had any toes he can’t feel them.

They say there are some women who won’t fill up

unless he’s there

unsalaried, they say.

I give him a dollar

which he takes but doesn’t want to take.

 

Now I am the one paying it forward.

 

Guilty

I liked my tray ceilings

and coffee tables covered in tabloids

Farm House

I liked my drifting darting eyes

Googling how to live

Godhelpme

Barn

I crooked my fingers permanently

tapping buttons to speak

when you should have heard my voice.

White House

I would have felt your body through the phone

if it saved me some time.

My Beautiful Girl

Today she broke my heart.

I knew it would happen–

the day she would come home to tell me

about the whispering

and the hurt feelings–

the day when all you can do is hold her

and let the tears fall

wishing she knew what I know about frivolity

and how beautiful she is

and how the girl who hurt her is beautiful too.

Two days ago, I watched her smile

when we searched through books on the computer.

She’s been dreaming of horses

and so we ordered a book to match her dreams.

And today, when the tears stopped and she stood up straight again,

I watched her from the window

fly through the snow that clung to her trail of hair

across the yard rousing the birds from their trees

towards the mailbox

and return moments later

with a grin as big as the horse on the cover of her new book

and then back into the arms of our house again,

to read.

Silent Night

We are sitting in Church on Christmas Eve,

the choir has begun its adagio hum of Silent Night.

Outside we hear faint sounds

of the coming and going of cars

on the one main road that goes through town.

There used to be three dove prints

perfectly greased on the window to the pulpit’s side–

broad wingspans, thinking they could fly through;

now the cold has frosted them over

and oversized snowflakes fall to herald their loss.

They are angels now,

the voices.

My youngest son grips the plastic cup and candle within—

dancing eyes transfixed by the flame.

Wax drips into something permanent,

and trying hard to steady his hand

he tilts the flame to catch in mine

thus we go down the line, to the giant eyes of my middle child; the dreaming ones of my eldest.

One by one the candles light,

the voices fade

and snow cases the ground outside.

January

Jan 4th“Again I reply to the triple winds
running chromatic fifths of derision
outside my my window:

Play louder.

You will not succeed. I am
bound more to my sentences
the more you batter at me
to follow you.

And the wind,

as before, fingers perfectly
its derisive music.”

(William Carlos Williams)