First Horses, 1519

We were thrown into the sea
at the Horse Latitudes.

Our manes spit foam at the moon, our hooves
plowed salt from our lungs

until we heard the last syllable
of the grieving Arab’s lullaby.

Then we rolled like opened wooden chests over
the black floor of the Atlantic,

we were death looking for a white sail.

Those of us who lived
went through the green door of a New World

where we where slaves.
Gentled men and women who’d forgotten
their own secrets.

We kept what we forgot
locked in our eyes and we rode into cornfields,

into war, under the heavy thighs
of men we wore like silver idols.

Among the first laws of New Spain, it was ordained
no Indian could ride us.

We heard them tell the Indians we were immortal.

That we were the lower part of a riding God,
and they must build corrals to hold us back

from devouring their human flesh.

The Indians watched our captors ride us with saddles
inlaid with silver and gold,

watched as our captors slept with us like silken women,
ran their tongues over the lashes of our velvet eyes,
made us beds next to their own.

The Indians went to war with us.

They burned us alive, or filled
us with arrows and ate the flesh from our necks
and left us among the gramma grasses.

When the first Apache chose one of our fastest
and rode away into thorns and pink hills,

the enemies of our enemies became our friends.

We loved those men who spoke into our manes
with sounds that had no word for king

and many for wind.

They sweated on us and rubbed our sweat
onto their bodies
until we were one.

They raced us and cast cords around our necks.

When winter weakened us they trapped us
in canyons or against bluffs

where our eyes rolled with the memory of salt waves.

They breathed into our nostrils until our spirits mingled,
and we gave them our speed and flesh
in exchange for their language
of wind.

Later, the horse-whisperers stepped forward, they were men
who were horses, too, of all colors. We chose them

for our healers, we
made them forget they were men
whose descendants would be born
inside fences, hospitals.

They almost made us forget the lightless bottom of the sea,
where our deaths are still calling like white sails.