sapphic

Apex

In all these winters I have learned
that a horse knows how to die.

There is no chemical injection
of postmortem glamour,
no garish powder pressed
into cold basins of hollow pores.

Instead there is this,
the languid abandon of wayward legs
dangling over the side of a Ford Ranger.

No quick underfoot crackle,
no memory of autumnal gallops
in the cracked hoof horn,
no leftover luster in the staring eye
or brief flutter of a girls breath
in the mane seeping like stale smoke
from beneath a flapping tarp.

Only staccato oval stamps
in the crusted December soil
for little-girl fingers to trace
in their first stumbling dance with grief.