What Horses Say

What’s to be made of the field of buttercups,
a saffron sea at the bend of the road,
with the three horses
                    ….one black with white mane and tail
                     …one coppered like a new penny
                    ….one white as an angel
a triumvirate of muscled peace and perfection.

What’s to be made
of thinking of 3 recently dead friends
every single time I drive past
the most laughably maudlin reach for meaning
when the real story is simple:
Time is real-
the realest unseen thing
undocumented, untouchable
a mystery deeper
than the eyes of horses.

What’s to be made
of Clinch Mountain in bright spring light
butter bright as the horse’s field for miles,
but just beside the gold section,
the ridge shrouds in clouds
as dark as my heart,
as if there had never been sun.
I’m tired of these poems–
just suitcases of dark
traveling nowhere.
I don’t want to carry them anymore.

What’s to be made
of these lines on a page
when I could just look in the eyes of horses,
lock their steady gaze like no other.
It is the deepest of dark loves,
fierce and fearless love of a father
who tells you all truths:
Don’t you know?
Life is an apprenticeship to grief.
While you live your dreams
building the house of your life,
you collect all the tinder
to burn it down,
turn it into a rubble you will eventually
have to crawl out of.

So they whispered as I lost sight of them in the turning:

You, the buttercups, the mountains,
horses and love itself will pass
but that deep gaze and golden light
will return, beaming out
from some other bright page.

*

Stains

I.
Purple is the color      of birthmarks and sunsets
of distant stars exploding      of bruises and death.
Time leaves a mark.      Otherwise,
how would we know it passed?      How could we go on,
all of it coming to nothing      just      gray hair and black dreams.
Every season contains purple      so it must be important.

II.
Today: a huge tree
bent a few feet from the ground       spine curved like an old woman’s back
branches splayed      toward a small stream of sun
a hole in the dense canopy       where a spot of blue
breaks through.      It’s easy to say
“Ah, bloom where you’re planted.      Find the light, be the light.”
and call it a day.      The shade there
is a deep pool of wine       and I float through it,
toward a surface      where light reclaims its gold.

III.
Years on, I stumble      still on the path.
My blanket of brambles      and briars no longer warm,
the smoothness of creek stones and silky dark soil
forgotten by knotty fingers      marked by amethyst vein maps
of all the dead ends      wrong turns      roadblocks.

All this is to say
it’s fair to wonder      what purpose bad luck serves.
May we receive grace—
an orchid or mulberry or magenta grace—
for questioning why      we sometimes root
where conditions require      a crippling
to survive.

Rita Sims Quillen is the author of two novels, Hiding Ezra and Wayland, and six books of poetry, including The Mad Farmer’s Wife, which was a finalist for the Weatherford Award. She lives in southwest Virginia.