ODE TO GOOD HORSES

Helping Earl meant bring your best
horse to stay ahead of trouble,
especially in Sulphur, a mount

that could cross the brushy draws
and stand up in scree, I’d imagine
the night before my young dreams—

a bay gelding who could read
the minds of renegades at 200 yards,
or the boot-tough brown mare

from Rudnick’s broncs before him.
They spent their lives making me
more helpful than I was, in or out

of the corrals. It was always Western
and I’d wake to saddle in the dark,
to be on time for wild adventure, enough

for all spread across the watershed—
simultaneous, far-flung accounts
polished in the shade for future poetry.