Even your gallop cannot drown out the earliest wars or
gunpowder parades tearing past the tympanum.
There is no in-one-and-out-the-other,
you’ve heard every good or bad deed the world has ever done.
You carried an entire planet on your back,
and never even invited their voices above your ears.
You heard the Colorado call out deeper than the ocean
and billions of shooting stars whisper into a wide open plain.
You knew the sound of morning before campfires crackled
and coffee brewed in the deep pine dark.
You twitched for hours, shaking out the forgotten
screams of soldiers, carried inside the bloody buzz of flies.
A cruel joke, to make insects circle and nag so tirelessly,
while the wingless rider mounting you must be reminded to play Mozart.
What was the sound in your heart
when the saddle finally lifted, laid out to dry in the twilight
What is the noise of rest
when you are bare again, and barley breaks between your ancient teeth
What does your own breathing feel like
when all have gone off to sleep, and you are left to drink rivers,
raise your ribs wide enough to brush stars
Do your lungs surprise you?
When you lower your head to drink
are you praying
or letting all the ghosts
finally slide down your neck
into the current
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 3.
Clint King, born in Indiana, was selected as a finalist for the Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminar and studied with Billy Collins at the Southampton Writers Conference. Clint lives in California, where he is at work on a collection of poems and a novel.
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