If I were a mare, an aging cow pony with a dark line down my back
when August’s sun is so hot, I stand still in drying grasses
and curse the biting flies on my eyes that make me wish I could
fall asleep somewhere dark and cool where the water is fresh 
 
And if you are the bay dressage thoroughbred in the same pasture 
and you have a white cotton mask over your head and ears
and a light gauze fly sheet sprayed with deterrent herbal oils 
on your back and that tasteless man beyond the fence says you look
like some kind of Ku Klux Horse though the flies still hover 
 
And if you amble forward toward a hank of lushness 
that grows out from under the split-rail fence, 
if I saw a green stain of spit on your lip and the way
your skin flutters where flies land, 
if I hear your hoof hit a rock and though you don’t stumble, 
you take three steps with a bit of hesitation between each,
 
then I would wander toward you; I might find
some wonderful mouthful on the way. Or not.  
I don’t care what your mask and blanket means
in terms of who cares for you and who cares for me
 
so I’d turn my rump toward your nose slowly
in the way of old ponies, and I would flick
my tail knowing you will switch at flies on me
because for all our years, no matter whether snow
drifts in the door to our barn or the water buckets
in our stalls are flecked with slimed hay and beetles, 
no matter, we are stablemates, barn-naked side by side.
                        

The cowboy entered on a gray horse. With a white Stetson,
tan hands, and tight jeans. He rode up to a Walmart 
in Eagle Point, Oregon to buy dog food. He heard
a woman scream, pointing to a young man riding off
on her bike. The cowboy cantered after the bike thief, 
threw his lasso, brought the kid down, tied him 
to a tree and called a policeman who thought 
the capture was totally slick.   
 
                           *
I watched that video clip ten times. 
I want that horse, I want to solve a problem
with an unexpected skill, a leap out of ordinary.
For twenty years I wore a silver Navajo bracelet
with three coral ovals – my Wonder Woman
cuff to deflect fear, absorb bad vibes and fight for freedom. 
I love red boots, red slippers, red sandals
 and if I can catch anything in my rope,
I’d aim for a glimmer of equality, of womanpower,
on a mare with an Appaloosa rump blanket of stars
who picked her way through the pass
marked with ancient carvings on rock 
and heard voices in tall grasses. 
                                           
                           *
If the woman who almost lost her bike is grateful
for horses, so am I. To remember Kapkap-Pommi,
(Noise of Running Feet), who at the age of twelve
galloped up to Sitting Bull’s camp in Canada 
ahead of U. S. soldiers pursuing her father, 
the Nez Perce Chief Joseph, leading his people
through the freezing Bitterroots in an escape
toward Canada. He of the fight-no-more-forever 
surrender. He who was never permitted to return home. 
 
She never saw her father in his exile. 
When she returned to the states, she was renamed
Sarah and put in an agency boarding school. But first,
and always she had outwitted and outrode Colonel Miles’
white soldiers. That is why I love my bracelet
of possibility and unexpected endings.