Barn Chores

Whispers in soft syllables, coven of healing,
they stand together around him, my old horse,
the four young girls who help with barn chores,
after they found him rolling, kicking in his paddock
in the mud, not getting up, nipping at his flanks –
Colic –  and they ran for help
on such a hot stormy summer night,
when they knew he could have twisted a gut
and died.

And after help came he stood and shook
and sweated, and they cleaned the mud
from his ears and washed his tail,
rubbed and brushed his back and belly
and haunches, whispered wordless healing
until his neck lowered and with eyes half closed
he breathed deeply again in the circle
of their young and healing hands.

The tallest girl steps away and walks
towards me and all at once I see and hear
what they have done in the power of their youth
before I could get there in heat and thunder and fear.
How proud she is that they knew what to do
and how certain she is that if I join their circle
and add my old age to their youth
more than my old horse will be made whole.

The Dream Again, with Cats

This time I find the small gray cat
only a bit darker than the winter twilight,
the color of the dream, of the dark
just below my heart, stepping

one paw after the other
into the same prints over snow
also gray striped by sinking light,
and she curls up on the ground

next to the corner of a concrete wall,
looks up at me with green jungle eyes
and meows. This time she lets me
pick her up, bring her inside,

where she jumps onto the laundry
on the sofa, slow blinks at me, and I
find my emergency cat food stash
in case a cat finds me and stays and I

rescue it and so I am rescued again
and she jumps down from the sofa
this time watching her settle
to eat opens my need and when I wipe

my eyes this time there’s a mirror
I look at then walk through
into dead leaves mixed with old snow
this time inside the mirror the cat is

white-haired, gaunt, gazing at me,
not blinking,
eyes my color.

School Horse

After she has polished his leg
all the way down to his hoof
she reaches up to his shoulder
standing on tiptoe holding her brush
with two hands, grooming her part
of the big bay horse who stands
patient, on the first day
of Little Kid Horse Camp.

She learns to ride in the school,
the ring, where years ago he was schooled
to balance himself through square corners
and along straight sides, to inscribe
with his body round circles, and to splash
fearlessly through puddles in his way.

He schools her in walk and halt
and rising trot as she grows older
each summer, taller, so her legs reach
below the saddle flap and touch his sides
so she can school circles, find balance
and canter on the same school horse
she has groomed so carefully
each summer at Horse Camp.

Winters, she falls asleep dreaming,
remembers how balance feels
as she gallops and jumps, fearless,
for the freedom of flying.

Each summer now he shows
little girls how to hold a brush
and clean a hoof. Each summer
the old bay horse still stands
patient, unaware that he schools them
into women, into who
they will become.

Lucia Owen moved to the foothills of western Maine over fifty years ago to teach high school English and wouldn’t live anywhere else. She holds an A.B from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. from Bryn Mawr College. Her serious writing developed at the same time she began caring at home for her husband of almost 48 years.  Horses (one at a time!) and cats have always been part of her life. Her work has appeared in The Cafe Review, Rust & Moth, Prospectus, and in a number of anthologies..