February 2022
Bio Note: I live on a farm along the Susquehanna River, just before that river crosses the border into Pennsylvania for the first time. There I and my husband have raised Morgan horses since the 1970's. My three full-length books of poetry are Crave (from NYQ Books); Appetite for the Divine (Ashland Poetry Press); and Remorseless Loyalty (also from Ashland Poetry Press).
Author's Note: Living among other-than-human-animals, in particular horses, is the life I have chosen and I would not trade it but one is often brought up against the fullness of life, including its hardships, at a visceral level.
Putting the Filly Down
Dead small click of a word to last so long. It's the improbably soft and lively look of her mane I won't forget. The body being small, they lashed her by the pasterns to a chain across the empty arms of a bucket loader and lifted her inverted in the air. The arms held her out before the tractor like an offering, and she rode that way to the grave in stiff dignity, save for the mocking animation of her mane, silken and playful in the face of February. No ceremony or Astroturf disguises here: this grave is raw-lipped and greedy as any hole you ever fill with something you'd spent love on.
From my collection Remorseless Loyalty
Author's Note: Whitetail deer are plentiful here in the foothills of the Catskills. I think of this as a Valentine poem.
A silver muscle of ice shuts up the brook. In the canopy, hardwoods crack their knuckles and sway, inward as adolescents. The slender birches lurch and rattle their stiffened fingers while a deer swivels the antennae of her ears scooping the air for warning sounds, and prints the snow with the sharp hearts of her hooves.
From my collection Remorseless Loyalty
©2022 Christine Gelineau
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