The Poisoned Horse

An egret perched on a cow

watched my uncle ride his horse

in a gallop as he held the reins

with one hand and covered

his glass eye with the other.

The hooves left marks on our land,

imprints of hardened keratin,

with fresh notes of joy in abundance,

harvests and enough water

in the trough to last a century.

But close to the ground,

inside the cracks left by those hooves,

a sense of change when a stranger in uniform

stole my uncle’s stallion and taunted him

by riding the horse in front of him.

Until my uncle’s brother and a friend

crawled up the mountain in grief

and fed his horse a poison.

Then neither he nor the stranger

could gallop through the mountains.