The Weight of Horses

My mother's cousin, Kurth, was the only other literary type in our family. We didn't have much in common until I went to college to study English, but then we had so much to talk about. The fall before he died he sent me advice on how to extricate myself from a term paper on deconstructionism and Cormac McCarthy. Jaws of Life couldn't have pulled me from that mess, but Kurth's loving eloquence ushered me through some long, bleary nights in the library.

I miss him all the time. I wish I'd had more time with him. My last memory of him before the funeral is this: Kurth, Andy and I sitting at a dining table outside at his country house, Newbold Revel. No sounds, just the wind in the new lavender. No smells, just the perfume of the new lavender and heavy, unfiltered cigarette smoke. We were full of rare roast lamb and mashed potatoes made by a man who lived by himself. I can't remember anything he said. We talked about poetry.

I'm thinking of him now because of a Linda Gregg poem I read yesterday called The Weight. Kurth had a stable named Blackacre out in Austin; he loved horses.

The Weight

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.
The dignity of being. They slept that way,
knowing each other always.
Withers quivering for a moment,
fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,
width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.
Fences were nothing compared to that.
People were nothing. They slept standing,
their throats curved against the other's rump.
They breathed against each other,
whinnied and stomped.
There are things they did that I do not know.
The privacy of them had a river in it.
Had our universe in it. And the way
its border looks back at us with its light.
This was finally their freedom.
The freedom an oak tree knows.
That is built at night by stars.