When wonderingWhy people rode West,
I ask horses.
For once I knew bright wanderlust,
Tears when sun wove down to flax—
But now I stay, as statues stay:
Sleepwalk.
Yet mustang herds in picture books
Choose godly mud, swim
Through oceaned fog as rivers
Under Utah stars—
So I mount my mare to rise
To fields of blistered sky,
Scale a cliff of glass or grass—
Let September sun trade places
With flickering holocaust of birch:
Fiery life in stirrups with muddy tread,
Nails pushed full of dirt and sand,
Living without permission—awake.
