poem

A History of Horses

She was once
horses across sand dunes,
sack lunches in the hills above Isleta:
brown as Indian bread,
lively as a new moon,
she was not twenty.

They counted stars,
stirred the warming sands,
awoke with Spring wind. Cocoa and cream:
swirling night into noon.
Only the horses knew
the way they had come.

Now,
she is twice a wife,
three times a mother. Her rosary beads
are worn smooth. The nights
parade without horses:
she does not remember how long.

T.L. Lachlan

A History of Horses is reprinted here with the permission of its author. The poem originally appeared in 1985 in The Sandstorm, the literary journal of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.