Never a mare dies but woods and men are angry. Busy yourself with dust and shake stiff feathers outside in sleet-wind whipping from the north. Only a mare lies down and delivers in darkness, then runs for miles until a neighbor finds her, wild-eyed, alone and bleeding. These hills make any man bitter, digging and pitching out stones for a hole.
Owls fly over in the night, inquiring.
Shelter the colt and let the wolves be wary. I'm sleeping off August on the porch swing, you're propped against a post, sketching. Dulled by work and cicadas, I feel your charcoal slice me better than I am, a deft excision here, a tuck to tighten skin below the eyes. I rise creaking like old canvas to bring you whatever you still see, after I stretch and hobble on a bone spur and stiff knees to the rail. After rains, dry riverbanks in hardscrabble bloom bluebonnets.