The light that is not from here

sometimes crawls across the ridges

and busies itself all night

never reaching that far

but always catching

always demanding.

 

One morning he woke without muscle

and an itch behind where his ear would be

and realized that he had stared at those lights

for too long, that he had become just something

chasing something else, that he no longer

knew what it felt like for his hooves

to sink into the soil.