Homage to Becoming a Horse

I read this really great poem in a magazine.

The imagery was palpable, tactile, touchable.

It was about this person who connected so closely

with a horse that he became, not just any

horse, but that horse — body parts

on body parts.

He leaned into the horse; eyes and face

and heart and thumbs and everything else

including his words became the horse; the

horse’s eyes, face, heart and hooves and

finally the horse’s slow moving tongue

became his words.

I tried that with my 110 year old Chocolate

Lab with eyes and face and heart and

thumbs and everything else including my

words. I hugged him closely while he labored

to breathe and then I began to sob

with anticipatory grief.

I couldn’t become Boomer as I had wanted.

I could only love him from distances of

universes so far away from who I am and

who he is, and yet, in the utter intimacy of a

man and the dog who had shown him the gift

of unconditional love.

Body parts became his words with

anticipatory grief

of unconditional love.