List of some things: February 2012: Kansas breaks spine on her shoulder with 6 pocket abscess down to the bone. We go back and forth over the Pass to Pilchuck Equine Hospital. We do wound care for months but she recovers. Tony is diagnosed with MJD, an inherited, degenerative brain disease. Evacuation for the Taylor Bridge Fire that passes on 3 sides of us. Evacuation for the Table Mountain Fire. Beau gets tangled in barbed wire and we are doing wound care for months and Beau recovers. The hospital announces that the psychiatric until will close at the end of 2013. It is February again. It is a fine balance between renewal and discouragement. The scale has not tipped yet. What I do know is that we planted two more fruit trees last fall during the second fire. I bought $150 of vegetable seed last month. Both horses are healthy. Four goats are bred. One foot in front of the other...

2 bad things and 1 goat poem

February may have killed the neighbor. No one has called. We left two messages. I know the pump to his well stopped. And his stepson Joe was getting desperate.

My mare is crippled. The horse that moves without effort, is hobbled to a gimp, a pulled muscle, an abcess. Soak her hoof two times a day in hot water, epsom salts. She buries the same hoof in snow.

Mud, ankle deep. The gravel washes off the driveway where the ditches filled in.




First Born Goat

First goat, grown up nursing his mother,
belly laughs in wind. Skeleton weed lifts off,
needles me, old barrel woman, tongue tied.
No other kids? Little boy goat, denutted,
his mother and one old woman. Goat leaps,
four ankles painted white, a swatch mixed
tan, cloven hoof, bucks me up thigh high.
I buy the white freezer deep as a casket to
saw goat pieces, parts paper wrapped will
marinate huckleberry wine, June fire roasted.
Steel my finger tips itching for seven inch ear,
my own blubber heart weighted like an iron.
In this rat’s life, wind shifts now a sharper tune,
dirt flings pricked up weeds, a little goat empty of
laughter. Finally, I yell no, we will not slaughter.
Bring me a basket, whole armfuls, kale, cabbage.
Collect buckets, freeze my own damn well water.
Piss poor woman, little goat, start new, already
dreaming to build us an entire oasis walking
a bald track to the blue skied pond, bitter brush,
blue heron tucks in two flying. Little goat stops,
mirrors mountain with water witched this way that.
Boy’s sloped nose, pupils toppled straight as columns,
tight lip grin, a new moon crest: Goat makes me laugh.


PJ

2/11/12 A Poem of Loose Horses

The Morning the Horses Get Loose

You my-horse-my-heart, and me race for the open upper gate,
your nostrils stretched so wide to guzzle up the next inhale,
arched muscles, neck coiled, all winter expectation unleashed.
Your shoulder jabs, me stumbling, frees you and the red horse.
Both front feet pulling the mist, splatter of mud, leaving me
yelling for husband, deaf, hobbled to an unbalancing disease.
Of course he can not hear. Key’s in the car speeding down,
bent double fog racing muddy hills clefts, my eyes seeking
your white tail yellowed with piss of entire winter, fog, and
sinews of red and white horse shadows, sun lacing through,
only this line of hoof prints pressed deep for keener purchase.
Corner of dirt meeting asphalt, staccato beat double backs,
as if the wrong turn while galloping for a new homestretch.
And I climb out of the car, idling and dinging its alarm, as if
there is nothing in the world but this simple cusp of spring.
Then the roan slows, tamps down the mist by the blue barn.
You silvered, gravity pinned by one hoof, curl to look back.
While the red horse, tired, takes one step in my direction.
Good boy, I call out from this corner, mud meets road where
I am standing empty handed. Is this enough? Tangled hair,
sleep crusted, still dressed in last night’s work clothes,
a scarlet winter coat, black bra abandoned in the pocket.
Am I, so alone, enough to call you home?
But the chestnut roan is trotting back, old horse so sleepy
until you get a hold of him whispering all your past,
the back of the race track rumors and so much flash
a single spray of water turns you liquid mercury.
Red horse finally decides: enough really is enough, while
you spin behind, pissy winter tail held like a fountain.
My back to the snow edged mountain, azure ponds,
I gently unwind the favored blue scarf with silver threads,
twine it around the mud and sweat crusted chestnut neck.
Reach one palm, press against the front legged heat. Good boy.
You pass, kicking gravel, all muscle and ache, next new path,
eyes glistening, gray mane splinters in a sun now dazzling.
Red roan circles me as I spiral within, only a blue scarf…
but you shoot past again, hooves fling sparkling mud to
cha-cha-cha, the steep point of rounded hips tapering.
Still the boy horse stays with me all the way inside the gate,
exactly where you turn to say, never really needed you two
anyway. You say, I am free and four step it up the road.
My husband, white beard, big hands, will come looking, finally
even you allow him, just this last time, to turn back.

The Barn

Dreams chase me back and forth across the bed. By three I know I didn't feed the extra flake. Four a.m. I'm pulling on my hat, vest. The moon is steeping behind clouds. Wind against my blue pajamas. Dogs jump off the porch and scatter. No horses in the barn as I drop the flake in the manger. Walking back up, calling dogs by name: Al, Scout. Jenna's on the porch. Company is gone tonight. Don't know if she left in irritation. More company comes today. Tony comes tomorrow while I'm working the next three nights. He says he might sleep in the barn with me but then can't figure out how to coordinate the dogs.

Awake again at seven. Hiss at the dogs, quiet. Coffee in bed. Eyes leaking tears. I get my computer. Start typing a message to my cousin who likes horses. Who's going to start riding seriously now that she's retired, now that she's almost seventy, next time she comes back from Haiti.
And I tell her my first two horses when I was thirteen, when I was twenty were disasters, absolute disasters. Now I am so lucky to have somwhere to flee to. Two times this week I ave had to brush past all obstacles to climb on a horse and realign, reaffirm. I ask my cousin how other people do it?

Walk back up to the house, pale sun, red bushes. Get the crock pot going and sweep athe floor. three heads of cabbage. I'll put my company to work with me slicng for saurkraut.

I think I'll put a CD on. I'll turn it up loud.

Clean stalls in my blue pajamas while the horses are eating oats and barley. I'll be back I say. We'll all go out this morning. The arena's already raked. with my friends we'll turn this day around.

Tuesday

The horse shoer comes at nine thirty, more or less. Ten after eight, Mary is waking up, humming, clearing her throat. She is my company, my guest, but I am unsure about almost everything today. I sit on the porch in the cold, a blanket over my legs. The sky is so blue it is silvery. The service berry, currants and hawthornes are red globes in the staw grass. We all steam in the cold.

I am tangled in a bad night that won't let me go. My only salvation is my horse. And I run to her. Brush while she eats chews her hay. Put the saddle on. Give her an apple. Run out the door, open the gate, run down the flat septic field, the knobs of knap week. Run down the ravine picking my way around rocks until I finally trip but do not fall close to the driveway. I swing the gate open and turn to run back.

My horse takes me on a beautiful ride. She says she is very relaxed. We go to the pond where Beau had enough trouble yesterday to jostle my back this way and that and I finally got off. Today Kansas chews the reins out of my hands as she stretches her neck so long.

The shoer is here.

Second day of hunting

Horses cause you to dream. Besids velvet coat, muscles as thick our whole bodies, horses magic is to compose dreams. Horses whisper in your ears. They nudge you in your sleep. In your dreams you learn to ride. You take the next step.
Second day of hunting season and I can no longer stomache riding in circles, bending to the right, bending to the left, a little leg yield on the way out. Instead I brush Kansas every inch. Mix water and peroxide, dab it on the neck bite. Spray with Schriners. Carefully tie her blue beads, her silver bells around her neck and roach clip to her gray mane. Saddle up and mount from the front porch. We are a long legged vison passing the bright red service berry bushes, the orange gooseberry leaves. Black dog Jenna does not listen and dips under the neighbors gate. His dog is not out. Black dog Scout backs us up.
Kansas and I crunch over the gravel. I move my sit bones like stilts and in a straight line. I pull up on my right side that will sag the second I let my mind wander. My hands, elbows and shoulders are bungies. We make our way as far as the pond. It is a mirage of hues sifting over its skin. There are horses on the other side. I see a black and a brown behind a far fence. Two old men dig at the bank of the road hunting for blue agates. Their shirts have pulled free, stripes of pale skin. I yell: Can you say hi? One man looks up. I yell again: Can you say hi to us? And he gets it. He yells hi back, says it is a beautiful day and then he asks if he is talking to the horse or the dogs. The horse I say. Beautiful horse he answers. Come down he waves. Oh, we're going to turn around here anyway. This is our first time to the pond. Really he asks. Too bad he says.
When we turn around, there are black angus far out in dry field. They are calling to each other. Kansas dances to turn her neck. Her good eye is wide open on the cows. She twists around. When I nudge her forward, she backs up.
I hum to keep my breath even. I tell myself to lean back. I turn her toward the barbed wire and she steps forward down the road. there is no weight on her front hooves. And then she twists around again to oggle the cows. Hum, lean back, turn to the fence. We head back down the road. I call out to the dogs. Jenna does not even flinch. Jenna is making her way back to the neighbors.
It's not until I get off at the mailbox, stuff my sweatshirt pocket with envelopes, that I start to daydream on the walk up the driveway. Kansas does not interrupt. She hangs her head and might as well be tiptoeing beside me. Her eye is bright. Clear as day I can see her with me riding, travel all the way up the road we just came down. We walk past the pond, the men are gone, and make the turn to the right where the road is rutted. There is no more gravel, just the dirt and we are climbing all the way toward the trees, the pines until we pass through the gap in the hills and dissappear from sight.

Dark at seven thirty now. Hot tub feels more than ninty-five degrees. The water buoys me. Steam swirls across the surface. Lean my head against the cedar rim. North is uphill. There are three lights then the darkness of the forest. The Big Dipper sags across the horizon. Straight up, darkness is coated by the Milky Way. High, over to the right, headlights, then they disappear. Coming down from the mountain. In and out, thin shouldered staggering height of pines. Last week it was us coming home from cutting wood. Wood in the bed. Three dogs in the back seat. In the forest we could see our breath. Maybe we have enough for the winter now but all day I stoked this hot tub stove just to sit in the heavy, hot water to watch these head lights spark back and forth out of the evergreens and wind their way down the open slopes so steep your heart will catch. Finally tires hit the nearest cattle guard, the metalic clang. This is where we laid the two dead goat babies last spring. Like a sinking stone. But right now, in front of me this night, on top the first two set of slopes a light where there is never a light. I did not tell my son this morning on the phone, the gunshot that woke me up. I told my daughter. This morning I wore my blue pajamas down to the barn and Tony's big shoes because he's gone all week and the black dogs danced rings around me. I stopped a minute. Stood in the stall door, the weak sun, while thoroughbreds chew their oats and barley, beau's dribbling out the corners of his mouth, Kansas licking up every grain. Another gunshot. Deer running along the open spaces, the dry, white grass, below. Two deer going one way, switching back another way, not knowing. You can come this way, come this way to the creek I whisper. I wonder if they are near by as I shift in the hot tub water and the soles of my feet let loose. My toes are free and I listen to the creek. There is a deep sound besides the steady rush of water. There is the deeper gurgle and in my mind's eye I can see where the water widens a little pool then passing through the willow brush. This moment and the next, the creek is the only single sound. I said I would not build near this creek. Over there where there are rocks and nothing green grows except the Bitter Brush and the Sage, maybe some cheat greass. Keep this the way it is. But the witcher found well water here. The septic on this side. At least the house is tiny, yellow light in the windows, the string of blue Christmas bulbs outlining the porch and the barn holds its own against the sky. I'd like to try the bigger bulbs in red, orange and green. I told you that and you wondered how we'd climb up to the peak. Well, it would not be you Tony, it will be me that does the climbing. But right now, dark night, my first hot tub up here alone.