At Some Point the Rider Always Lets the Horse Find…
| YouTube Video Link |
At Some Point the Rider Always Lets the Horse Find Its Own WayD.V. is no different than any man who holds life and death in his hands and dismisses the miraculous with words like plumbing and playhouseas he throws a pair of black stitches into the seam of a woman’s flesh.He’s come from his third delivery this week, a boy, in a row housewhere he thought he’d suffocate under a blanket of piety and prayer.The sun’s red flame in the window said something else was true,and, washing up, he told a joke. The one about the Irish bartender who asks whether his patron would like a second drink of whisky.The saddle’s cold, fangs of ice hang from the stirrups as he rides.The horse knows the barn as a place out of the wind, wants to hurry.Smiling, D.V. recalls the punchline: No bird ever flew on one wingand lets the animal have its way. Passing a last house, he thinksthe hard gleam of the world softened, the blood-slosh and -frothof terrible injury or difficult birth a memory the closed eye releases.This time, it becomes a line of traincars slowing in the switching yard,wheel-and-track braking noises at the decibel level of a muffled shout.The rouged air is a mixture of coalsmoke and snow falling onto trackand traincar, and that awful need to believe in God or nothing at all.Copyright 2008 Roy Bentley Author: Bentleymon |
