☀ Today's Poem: "Two Horses in a Field in Mid-December" Lance Larsen

These strands of twisting wires keeping horses there
and me here is called a fence. Tears form and tears
fall from above and we call it rain. If it freezes,
as it's trying to do now, we name it snow, even if sun
flares from the east as it does in sparkly postcards
from Colorado. And this patch of dead grass
hurtling through time and tomorrow is part of a blue
sphere we call earth. We rarely send earth thank-you notes.
It is easier to worry about spiced tea and poinsettias
and our cousin's accident and winter solstice
and a late mortgage payment and future orgasms
and where in the valley one can buy decent focaccia.
My left hand is cold, my right hand colder,
and I wonder how long can I lean on this fence watching
it snow? The wet stuff collects on the back of a white
horse, a matching blanket. It falls too on the back
of this black mare but immediately melts.
This is how mystery and beauty collude, how weather,
even the weakest trickle of sun, fills me
with questions. Tonight I will look at the sky and link
winking stars into creatures and call it astronomy.
And I'll look inside and see more broken creatures
and call it middle age, call it longing, call it where
are all the sweet rivers I used to swim? I'll talk to the dark
I'm walking through and call it prayer. I'll chew
on it, sing cracked psalms to it, even cough it out,
and pretend it has no place in me. But that's for later.
Right now, colors are streaming through this camera
called the eye, starlings flicking and flirting, flapping
and finessing. My hands are still cold, my breath
vapor. I'm the only person leaning into this field,
this story problem in stillness, one horse white,
one black, a little snow, a little sun. How long will earth
hold me in its tender mouth? I count backwards
from 100. An orange cat weasels by. Robins
scrap over a rosehip. I have no idea what I'm counting.