… even a strangeness, close to the heart, can be

ecological pressure for the evolution of a brain.  Bill Yake

 

 

Sitting above an ancient Nez Perce fishing trap

in the cool shade of a manzanita bush

where a stream trickles into the lake,

I watch an Appaloosa mare lead a small band

of mustangs to drink from Wallowa Lake.

She — having just run like a filly for the fun of it,

across a frontier without fences, full of an older

wilder freedom — shares this scene with me.

 

Propinquity brings me to a quiet passion

that casts out my almost-thought

of how mid-life she looks just now . . . how her birth

was but a beginning and her death merely

destination . . . and shows how her life, how my life,

how our lives now are what’s lived in the in-between,

one day at a time in ways that unfold

the true nature of a species. Mine. Hers.

 

The horse and her landscape stare back at me

a moment, and I adjust my Self, my Life:

a deep image such as this requires the truth