Heartstrings : Happenings

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Happenings

Oh, so much to write about - it's overwhelming! At some point this blog will need a redesign since it will now be chronicling more than just Coro. I was thinking of "Hearts & Flowers" - maybe a little precious but since I have an El Corazon and a Dandelion Wine, it fits!

Notchee and Coro were moved to their new home on the prairie a few weeks ago. It almost went through without a hitch. They were champs about loading - both horses were on the trailer in under fifteen minutes. Coro practically self loaded. Unfortunately Notchee slipped on her last step with her right hind leg, came down on the edge of the trailer with the back of that leg, and ended up with a serious flap wound, chipped splint and scraped cannon bone. Thankfully there was no tendon/ligament involvement and the joint was just missed. The vet was able to close it up well and her 9-day recheck on Monday was the best we could hope for. She has been the sweetest patient. She should be able to have her stitches out next week and soon be enjoying her new pasture! Coro initially put himself on stall rest also and would not leave Notchee's side, but he is spending more time in his run now and has been out in the pasture on a lead rope. I think this weekend I will be opening his gate and seeing what he thinks of (relative) freedom.

Notchee and Coro in their new stalls

I had my first ride on The Boy in over a month and his first ride at the new place last weekend. He was fantastic and seemed really happy to get his saddle and bridle on and do a little jaunty zooming around in the new outdoor arena. It's on a little slope but the footing is very good - less packed and rocky than the old barn. He was so cute with his arched neck and pricked ears, and I was delighted with his behavior. I love him.

Quite possibly my favorite picture of Coro ever - doesn't he look nice in a red barn?

Coro sampling the pasture

Dani Girl is doing great. I am riding her 3-4 times a week with bi-weekly or so lessons. We are starting to really click and I am just constantly impressed with the work ethic and consistency this young mare has. After every ride I am excited for the next. This past week we've been focusing on sitting trot, maintaining connection, and staying balanced on my seat bones - I tend to sit heavily on my right. Much, much more to work on as far as my position and aids but I am so lucky to have a horse who is forward and forgiving enough to allow me to figure this out on her back. I love her.

Dani after our lesson Friday

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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.