Horse + Smoke
By: Elizabeth Cohen
1.
Horse
Horse, I am going to lead you to water.
I’ll take your harness, walk you down.
All day you have run in the paddock
with the other horses, using your tail
that clever way, to brush the flies
away from one another’s eyes.
I’ve seen, too, how you avoid stumbling
on the rocky steeps of the BLM,
the way you round the bend into
evening’s secrets, like you share them.
I have felt the way you waltz over the black ice
beneath me. Seen you stand in the stiff winds,
powering snowdrifts like a boss.
You even handle the pops of distant
shotguns –so much better than my dogs,
who will hide beneath the bed.
You’ll migrate to a single stub of carrot
from across the ages.
I’ve only seen you shy once—
at the appearance of a rattlesnake.
And that, horse, is just smart.
All this, I know, must make you thirsty.
So I want to know if it’s true
what they say, or sheer apocrypha.
Because truth is something I now see
can be forced into an underground cave
with diseased bats, while rumor runs
untethered and wild on the mesas,
around and around the racetracks,
leaping barrels. Doing tricks.
And this one has been going around forever,
so horse, let’s get to the bottom of it.
I’ll lead, we will find out.
2.
Smoke
I will follow you.
Not right behind
the grey wisp
of your tail
but back aways
I will go down
into the Calf Canyon
and walk among
the charred corpses
of the trees
I’ll wake up
to the scent of you
and find your path
I am your dazed rubber
necker, horrified spectator
in your coliseum
of the forest’s death
But mostly, smoke
I want to know
If it’s true what they say
that you follow beauty
How around a campfire
you’ll find the prettiest girl
and move her direction
with your grizzled nose
It’s always bothered me
that idea, that like a sundial
you can point into the hours
find a single beauty, lasso her
in your ashy breath
So smoke, I am going to follow you,
find out if you really
do follow beauty
Everyone who ever read
a book as a child
knows that Beauty
was a horse. Maybe you
are following her, going down
the gullies, running toward
her sleek, black freedom
which is understandable
Maybe you don’t like
the reputation as mountainside’s
murderer, the sad shawl at the funeral.
Maybe you, like me
just want to know what will really
happen if you lead a horse to water
since you know a thing or two
on that topic.
Water, that is.
How it answers thirst
How it quenches dry
how it sizzles out
flames, one of the ways
in which you are born.
Elizabeth Cohen is an award-winning poet and writer, the author or The Family on Beartown Road, a memoir; The Hypothetical Girl, a collection of short stories, and five books of poetry, most recently Mermaids of Albuquerque. Her work has been recently published in Blue Mesa, San Antonio Review, Cagibi, Smokelong Quarterly, and The Coachella Review. Former editor of Saranac Review and Associate Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, these days she lives and writes in New Mexico where she lives with her dog, Layla.