How a Horse Gets Up

  —for Ralph Cheadle

The trouble with this poem, he tells us,

isn’t the poetry of it. The words are beautiful—

they really make you want to believe.

Hell, if I didn’t know better,

I’d believe it myself.

But the rump of a horse

doesn’t rise first. She’s got a cow here,

not a horse! And a bay mare “sounds” nice

but she’s got the color wrong, too…

A roan might work for the sun.

That’s when I knew

he was serious about the circuit,

about living out of the back of his old truck

and following those horses.