Friday, September 18, 2009

The Team of Workhorses


The Team of Workhorses



The two workhorses come in from the field.
They stand at the tank,
horse collars still on.
Their coltishness remains tangled
in their rumpled manes.


They offer, generously, to do all the work.
They rarely look back over their shoulders.
Their long eyelashes are girlish,
and their foreheads, blunt


To the wind, say,
“We might change our minds right now.”
Their eyes flare like children’s.
They are easily startled
And are as changeable
as cottonwoods in wind.


They might gallop this minute five miles
up the canyon.
Their extravagant ears, stuffed with hair,
turn so swiftly to absorb a splash,
a thundercrack, a rock


Falling, guiding knowledge directly
into the brain.
I think we are less safe now
than our grandparents
Were when horses turned their faces
to look at them.


Robert Bly

Posted over on The New Yorker

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