IN THE JANUARIED MOUNTAINS
My little horse must think it queer.
But who cares what he thinks?
Listening to an animal might get me killed
look what happened to Walter.
And so I go on.
Not just with life in general
but with this particular day.
And I allow things to happen,
like the snow to come down,
like Tom Waits' Alice to create
a tiny stainless drain somewhere
in my core this morning.
And I dig out and put on
a very old pair of tennis shorts
that look like a dinner napkin.
And I step out into the yard
and kneel, and pet the studded radial,
like running a hand across an open field
of steel babies' teeth.
And I think about flogging him.
The horse!
I think about going back out there to find him.
And I think about Klaus Kinski.
What would Klaus Kinski do? I think
about how in theory the hammer
is never to hit the anvil.
I think about how a butterfly, if
permitted, will crawl neurotically
all over a soldier's face for half an hour.
The snow sifts down like so many blankets.
As I move out across the pasture
I think about this . . . and Kinski. And anvils.
I can't say I'm surprised to find
my little horse breathing a dent for himself
in the snow. Nor that the dent looks strangely
like a baby Jesus. A baby Jesus on his back,
sinking into the snow.
SPECIAL
As I speed north up highway I91, passing Zortman on toward Malta, I
look out and see a lone donkey on the open plain. Mostly snow and pale
yellow tufts of grass poking up through snow. Now I see him, the 2nd
donkey, hundreds of yards off , coming along with his head down, ripping
tufts of yellow grass I'm guessing as he staggers about. I quickly rearrange
it all in my mind: I see them as two gay male Montana donkeys who
were previously alone before meeting up one day on the open plain. It
reminds me of a rancher one time. Something in the way this rancher's
mustache - the corners of his black mustache - how they curved down,
it - it reminded me of the pincers on a beetle. I'm speeding along. I don't
have time for any of this. I reach up and trace with my finger the word
special in the foggy part of the windshield above the dash.
