Elegy for Kentucky

Nowhere to drive, night upon night

that last summer, but back back

to the cokey couple I was crashing with

in their 26-year habit. On the way there

the same horse always dying at the curve

before I turned, like a kitschy disco ball,

onto their street, name I can't recall.

There she lay toppled like a toy figurine.

Calm but huffing, a laboring machine

making steam, though the cold air

belonged to June, its grief. A filly

done before becoming a mother, great belly

black & wide as all surrender

& that magnificent face still against the grass

waiting on the end. There she was every time

whispering something to me, a line

throbbing, a visible heartbeat I watched

in the mirror for hours with my huge horse eyes.

I needed to see her, to make sure

she was still there. I went the same way each evening

wanting to feel something, to see

this once-immortal creature get up. Any weak thing

was welcome to finish me then & when he came

into the room with bridle & bit,

on his 26-year high, when he came

up on me where I was lying at that curve

in my mind, arms & teeth numb,

I did not resist. Just a muted yell inside for months

before it lit on me like an ancestor.

As a child, I followed my grandfather

across the street behind our house

-Longfield Avenue, backside of the track

where the thoroughbreds for that May's Derby

were trapped, bored of what they were bred for,

all their royalty within a corral.

My hand, a child's offering, was empty

when they snorted & drew their worn noses

across my palm, yet, it was in their nature to remain

friendly toward me. My home did not keep

its promise after my grandfather died.

There was no protection for what I was

without him. Lone black filly. Finished

before becoming. She must have tired

of standing there high-headed, waiting for me

to ride her out of that war, to call out

let's go. We are done here.