The heart wants / her horses back
—Ada Limon
Everywhere a fly settles,
a twitch on the glossy flank—
the chocolate horse, past her prime,
sides heaving like the cheeks of a trumpeter,
patiently waits for an apple or carrot,
pilfered from my mother’s Frigidaire.
I spider-leg up the dirt road
where muddy water runs down
trickling in a tire rut, meandering
from side to side snake-like.
I have nothing to do but hang from the
paint-flecked gate. It creaks. A wasp
exits a bullet hole in the galvanized fence post.
The mare rushes toward me. One horseshoe
clicks on a rock. Up close, her long-lashed eye,
dome glassy as a fortuneteller’s crystal ball,
reflects me, the weedy pasture, clouds puffing
along the horizon. The apple rests temptingly
on my outstretched palm. She lips it and chomps,
pumps a delighted huff through flared nostrils.
How that last summer, the mare taught me,
a teenage virgin, to ride bareback—
the pleasure of sex without penetration
and betrayal. I was wild, crazy with speed.
And later, night hurtling, clinging to a man’s
warm leathers, my hands clasped
in front of his slim waist, I jockeyed—
the roar of motorcycle vibration
between my knees—his heartbeat
close under my anticipation.
There she was every time nuzzling my palm.
Was she beautiful without me?
Dale Champlin, an Oregon poet, has poems in The Opiate, Timberline Review, Pif, Willawaw, and elsewhere. Her first collection, The Barbie Diaries, was published in 2019, Callie Comes of Age, 2021, and Isadora, 2022. Dale loves nothing more that the scent of juniper and sage. Visit her at dalechamplin.com