The Ring

And still it continued.
I remember seeing birth from above,
peering like God from the hay loft
as the mare foaled and the water broke
and I remember crying later at the kitchen table
cursing because we were alone, just my parents
and I and my brothers in bed, all of us alone.

The creek every year growing fat,
almost flooding the ring,
almost washing away the hard earned sand
and gravel and hurt that we erected
special fences to contain. Who knows
how much my parents paid for it all
the concrete dumped on the edge of the ring
to shelter up and contain and keep safe
what nature should have washed away long ago.

A holding action held too long, the stall
always cleaned but still a stall, a holding pen,
my mother's horses like concubines,
loved but imprisoned, how long could they
be contained?
It all seems an analogy now, an allegory,
how could we not have seen it? How could I
be learning to read the spread scat of literature
and not see the electric fence for what it was,
pulsing like a heart, keeping them contained?

--6/29/00