Heartstrings : Horses Everywhere

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Horses Everywhere

I had a couple of trial rides last week, and liked one mare enough for a second look - I'll be having a lesson on her tomorrow evening. Exciting stuff, but of course I'm trying to be level-headed about it all.

I spent most of the weekend on and around horses, and couldn't have been happier, leading me to believe that I'm on the right path by expanding my equine life.

On Friday, in addition to a quick ride on Coro before his trim and my appointment to see aforementioned mare, I got to ride one of my favorite horses, a 17 year old Andalusian owned by a friend of mine. It had been several years but I know Lumina recognized me and we picked up as if we'd ridden the day before. My friend has all kinds of obstacles set up in the arena: a bridge, a rope gate, a jousting target arm, a pedestal and ground poles. Lumina is just made of try and I had her going in a beautiful trot. We had a lot of fun playing with the obstacles and I grinned the entire time. That mare has a heart of gold.

On Saturday I met up with a barnmate and her TB, Beau, for a trail ride. Beau and Coro get along really well and although Beau is eight inches taller, Coro speed-walked his way in the lead for the whole ride. Both boys were really good - it was wonderful to be out on a summer day. Coro had energy to spare. When we got back, my barnmate helped me bathe Coro - he is afraid of the hose but I managed to give him a pretty good sponge bath and shampoo his tail for his modeling debut. I gave Notchee a real bath - she danced around some but was generally good - and let her run around in the outdoor arena, though after she came charging up to me several times she decided she mostly just wanted to hang out with me by the fence. She is a funny horse.

Sunday afternoon it was back to my barn for my portrait shoot with Coro. I arrived early to do some touch-up grooming but he had stayed surprisingly clean. He really does love all the attention. I put gold glitter in his mane and tail and polished his coat to a silvery shine. My friend brought her son who was a big help with prop duty and horse-attention-getting. Coro was just a gem - so patient with everything and hamming it up. We did several different settings and two different outfits, and Coro tolerated (I would even say enjoyed) getting dressed up with a cowboy hat, a yellow scarf, and pink flowers (not all at once). After that we went into the arena and got some of me riding bareback. I can't wait to see them!

4 comments:

DomJune 12, 2012 at 3:53 PM
So good to see you happy :)
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Calm, Forward, StraightJune 12, 2012 at 3:53 PM
I like the sound of gold glitter in the mane! Looking forward to the pictures and a report on the potential mare. :)
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TerryJune 13, 2012 at 12:57 PM
Best of luck with the mare!
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KateJune 13, 2012 at 4:55 PM
I can't wait to hear about your lesson :)
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Poetry Corner

Source
by Mark Doty

I'd been traveling all day, driving north
—smaller and smaller roads, clapboard houses
startled awake by the new green around them—

when I saw three horses in a fenced field
by the narrow highway's edge: white horses,

two uniformly snowy, the other speckled
as though he'd been rolling in flakes of rust.
They were of graduated sizes—small, medium,

large—and two stood to watch while the smallest
waded up to his knees in a shallow pond,

tossing his head and taking
—it seemed unmistakable—
delight in the cool water

around his hooves and ankles.
I kept on driving, I went into town

to visit the bookstores and the coffee bar
and looked at the new novels
and the volumes of poetry, but all the time

it was horses I was thinking of,
and when I drove back to find them,

the three companions left off
whatever it was they were playing at
and came nearer the wire fence—

I'd pulled over onto the grassy shoulder
of the highway—to see what I'd brought them.

Experience is an intact fruit,
core and flesh and rind of it; once cut open,
entered, it can't be the same, can it?

Though that is the dream of the poem:
as if we could look out

through that moment's blushed skin.
They wandered toward the fence.
The tallest turned toward me;

I was moved by the verticality of her face,
elongated reach from the tips of her ears

down to white eyelids and lashes,
the pink articulation
of nostrils, wind stirring the strands

of her mane a little to frame the gaze
in which she fixed me. She was the bold one;

the others stood at a slight distance
while she held me in her attention.
Put your tongue to the green-flecked peel

of it, reader, and taste it
from the inside: would you believe me
if I said that beneath them a clear channel

ran from the three horses to the place
they'd come from, the cool womb

of nothing, cave at the heart
of the world, deep and resilient and firmly set
at the core of things? Not emptiness,

not negation, but a generous, cold nothing:
the breathing space out of which new shoots

are propelled to the grazing mouths,
out of which the horses themselves are tendered
into the new light. The poem wants the impossible;

the poem wants a name for the kind nothing
at the core of time, out of which the foals

come tumbling: curled, fetal, dreaming,
and into which the old crumple, fetlock
and skull breaking like waves of foaming milk....

Cold, bracing nothing that mothers forth
mud and mint, hoof and clover, root hair

and horsehair and the accordion bones
of the rust-spotted little one unfolding itself
into the afternoon. You too: you flare

and fall back into the necessary
open space. What could be better than that?

It was the beginning of May,
the black earth nearly steaming,
and a scatter of petals decked the mud

like pearls, everything warm with setting out,
and you could see beneath their hooves
the path they'd traveled up, the horse road

on which they trot into the world, eager for pleasure
and sunlight, and down which they descend,

in good time, into the source of spring.