A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

-James Wright

I glimpse these horses every day as I drive up and down our road. These horses seem to catch everything. When our car (or any car, really) comes up the road, they trot to the gate and lean their heads over it. They crane their necks and watch and wait and hope. I’m pretty sure they know which neighbor belongs to each car, and they anticipate greetings. Often, I am rushing and don’t have the energy to get out of the car, but I roll down my window and call out to them, “Hello you sweet creatures!” Their ears perk up as I meet their unwavering, gentle eyes.

These horses delight me. I like how they lean into each other on cool mornings, I like their openness to everyone. I want to be that kind of friend and person. I like how they stand there in the dark, and in the rain, unflinching. When it is really rainy, their owner sometimes puts raincoats on them, and still, as embarrassing as that must be for them, they do not flinch. They just stand there waiting for something great to happen.

When their owner’s husband comes to fix the gate, the horses like to make trouble for him. He turns his back on them for a moment, and they gingerly extract tools from his belt with their teeth. One time, a dog was pestering them and one of the horses grabbed the dog by his harness and threw him ten feet! Their owner tells me that Arabian horses are often raised in tents, with people, and if they are well cared for, they never lose that sense of connection.

A few months back, we could have lost these horses. A neighbor was driving up our hill when she smelled a horrible acrid smell. Then, she saw smoke snaking out of her hood. She pulled over beside the pasture and jumped out just before the car exploded. It was like sometime from the Dukes of Hazard, only it actually happened on our little road.

Here’s a video my neighbor Matt Lovein took of the explosion:

Updated video of Holualoa car fire, 3 minute version from Matthew Lovein on Vimeo.

I came home to the charred skeleton of the car, the singed grass and the horses’ owner trying to get the frantic horses out of the pasture. They were dripping with sweat and covered with soot. But as frightening as the episode was, they actually experienced a miracle of sorts. We all did.

The fire occurred when we were in the midst of the worst draught in the country and the worst this part of Hawaii has seen for many years. You can see how crisp and yellow the grass was. We needed rain in a bad way. The day before the fire, I thought, “That pasture is a fire waiting to happen.”

But when my neighbor pulled over, she happened to park just beside the water line. When the car exploded, it melted the line and water shot straight up (you can see this in the video, too) and created a wall of water that partly-contained the fire. This was a very good thing, because it took the firefighters more than twenty minutes to arrive. After they put the fire out, they said that if our neighbor had parked on the other side of the road, it would have been a disaster. We could have lost acres and acres, homes and of course, those sweet horses, who are the friendliest, most congenial neighbors you could possibly hope for.

Poetry Wednesday