I've wanted to squeeze

despair into thin air

discharge charity

with my Remington

muzzle to her ear,

blast gray suffering

from this fleshless, ratty hide

tight as a drum

over Willow Buena's bones

half-a-dozen times

when the shadows climbed

up canyon evenings

each September

only to let her go

another winter

with each memory

in her one soft eye,

the other in a cloud.

Were I young again

she'd be gone.

Her neck is softer

beneath the halter

as I lead her out

of retirement, away

from the fretting mules

she's sat

the past six years

& I think of my father's step

as it slides along the furrow,

led up & down the orchard row

by something

I can't quite see

in me.

Another man,

another horse,

another time

would have let nature claim her,

graze until gravity pulled her down

some frosty night

to be licked & chewed,

melt away,

forgotten carrion.

The ridgeline of her spine is

hard

to look at

this close to the house

in the only spot of green.

She trains us,

rattles the bucket

earlier each dawn

as if she could

bring the sun.