Perhaps it really was magic,
a lone whinny cutting the country air,
snorting drifting over the courtyard,
shadows moving in the straw
while the sunlight beamed through heaven’s clouds.
Paths opened like milky ways. And the cadenced
walk, then trot made the world rock in harmony.
If spirits danced in the meadows, they were holding
hands here; they were jumping the coups with us.
Bird calls made the fox dart, the deer scamper.
Echoes fluttered off the tree limbs.
The 70s lent their disco ear to the cities. And political
antics stayed in quiet rooms unknown. It didn’t
matter if the world spun on a dime or dollar,
only that the horses grazed in the fields and that the fences
blended with the pasture so that they almost didn’t
look like fences. It seemed that the stream
that ran through had always been here and always
would be. Never mind that the neighbor had parceled
a split level with air conditioning one lot over.
the town was widening toward a highway connecting commerce
with big wheels. Here, there was only green leaf and grass
blade, small game and fleeting fawn. Here, my horse’s name
was a paper, registered, so that he could race and be bought
and sold, for money, now worthless in time.
—
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals internationally, including About Place Journal, Cimarron Review, The Massachusetts Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. www.donnajgelagotislee.com
