Ahrend Torrey is a poet and painter. He is a creative writing graduate from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. When he is not writing, or working in New Orleans, he enjoys the simpler things in life, like walking around City Park with his husband, Jonathan, and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. Forthcoming this year, his collection of poems ‘Small Blue Harbor’ will be available from The Poetry Box Select imprint.
One Moment
A cardinal flits around the myrtle tree, sings out into the yellow rise of morning, and my dog, Dich, hops around the yard like a slow hare, out of a burrow in Spring. He eats grass, for what must be an upset stomach. The cardinal sings and sings. Then like a toilet plunger sucking at a thick clog, Dich heaves and heaves, then gags it up, while the cardinal sings from a different branch now. What relief he must feel—walking to lap up water from a partly rusted pail. And the cardinal sings and sings and sings…
From Hay Bales in a Barn
I smell a young stallion galloping from another century, when Earth was less disturbed and there were more healthy fields.
Another whiff: how joyous, too, the red mare gallops and gallops. She excitedly whisks tail and stops to tear the tuffs of grass, then walks to breath me with her nose of silk.
A man revs his truck and moves away the hay-aroma with diesel: I watch the mare and stallion gallop off through evening’s last light.
In all the world, no more horses.