Elegy for Kentucky
Nowhere to drive, night upon night
that last summer, but back back
to the cokey couple I was crashing with
in their 26-year habit. On the way there
the same horse always dying at the curve
before I turned, like a kitschy disco ball,
onto their street, name I can’t recall.
There she lay toppled like a toy figurine.
Calm but huffing, a laboring machine
making steam, though the cold air
belonged to June, its grief. A filly
done before becoming a mother, great belly
black & wide as all surrender
& that magnificent face still against the grass
waiting on the end. There she was every time
whispering something to me, a line
throbbing, a visible heartbeat I watched
in the mirror for hours with my huge horse eyes.
I needed to see her, to make sure
she was still there. I went the same way each evening
wanting to feel something, to see
this once-immortal creature get up. Any weak thing
was welcome to finish me then & when he came
into the room with bridle & bit,
on his 26-year high, when he came
up on me where I was lying at that curve
in my mind, arms & teeth numb,
I did not resist. Just a muted yell inside for months
before it lit on me like an ancestor.
As a child, I followed my grandfather
across the street behind our house
—Longfield Avenue, backside of the track
where the thoroughbreds for that May’s Derby
were trapped, bored of what they were bred for,
all their royalty within a corral.
My hand, a child’s offering, was empty
when they snorted & drew their worn noses
across my palm, yet, it was in their nature to remain
friendly toward me. My home did not keep
its promise after my grandfather died.
There was no protection for what I was
without him. Lone black filly. Finished
before becoming. She must have tired
of standing there high-headed, waiting for me
to ride her out of that war, to call out
let’s go. We are done here.
źródło: Read A Little Poetry
10.09.2026