Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Gary LeBel: RED POPPIES

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Horses have an internal rhythm all their own. One can learn the art of relaxation by doubling their slow heartbeats and noble turns. Everything about them exudes grace and strength.

The language of directness they speak we’ve long forgotten, but some of its words return now and then to the palms gliding over the smooth, dense contours of their bodies, those syllables of an ageless glossolalia the fingers still hear and translate for the mind to apprehend.

In the horse’s deep eye there burns a twin that prances outside a palace’s gates, wild and complete, unbridled by any prince. While the young Arabian grazes in the pasture across the road, there’s an uncanny feeling of a mane riffling down to a field in Macedonia that is quilted as far as the eye can see with red poppies.

We feed the lone mare
handfuls of sweet clover,
her dark eyes giving thanks
for strokes in places only another horse
could touch.



by Gary LeBel
Cumming, Georgia
2002

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