Bend | Jim Peterson
I found you walking beside a horse
without halter or lead. It shadowed you,
sometimes resting its enormous head
on your shoulder. I’d been alone
for a long time. I feared you were the end
of all that. Sometimes at night
we laid a blanket down in the pasture,
the dark, ground-hugging clouds of horses
grazing around us. I talked a lot
but you didn’t care. You were already
who you were. Whenever a horse saw you
its ears pricked forward. Its eyes
followed you. When the horse stumbled
and fell, it was you who stumbled and fell.
When it flew over the fences and creeks
it was you flying. When its body curved
from nose to tail, when it shortened
or stretched out its gait, it was you.
I said teach me. You showed me my hands
that didn’t know they were feeling
the horse in the reins. You showed me
my legs and feet that didn’t know
they were shaping the stream of that body.
I couldn’t fathom that my thoughts
fell into the river of the horse and altered
its course, its bearing. As I learned, I felt
the current of my body bend
toward the current of yours. Their confluence—
woman, man, and horse walking together.
About the Author:
Jim Peterson has published the novel Paper Crown from Red Hen Press in 2005 and seven poetry collections, most recently The Horse Who Bears Me Away from Red Hen Press in 2020 and Speech Minus Applause from Press 53 in 2019. His collection of short stories, The Sadness of Whirlwinds, was published by Red Hen late in 2021. He retired as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College in 2013 and remains on the faculty of the University of Nebraska-Omaha MFA Program in Creative Writing. He lives with his charismatic, three-legged Corgi, Mama Kilya, in Lynchburg, Virginia.