What Happens When We Tend Animals More Intelligent Than Ourselves

D. C. Reid
From:   Open 24 Hours. Fredericton, NB: Broken Jaw Press, 1997.

Geese, in lifting from the paddock, turn from black to white on white and disappear.
The in a room sound of hooves across a wooden bridge.

And it goes on like this, putting hands into gloves, giving orders
to the neck of a horse, the scent of hogfuel, confusion.
                The raisined scent of pee.

I cannot comprehend the wiring of finger on neck.
         But to see the animal move under a girl who is also mine.

Piaffe, passage, half pass, those imperceptible fingers
               make the horse round and turn. Braid my hair
                      I might gush and rise to the height of an animal.

                                    *

Afternoon at that exact moment when light comes out of things.
Breeched and sixteen, she reaches through the distance and takes my arm.

                     "Je t'aime you, Daddyo."

O, how that light can make me foolish.
The quality of light in that country, Pasture 4: me and my teenager,
             a bathtub full of whirligigs.

                     Je t'aime you too.

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D. C. Reid's works copyright © to the author.