I Witnessed Horses Painted in the Sky

Through my high-rise sliding door I saw—

no, witnessed really—a low cloud bank above

Makaha Ridge, turning light from the west

into shapes in the sky below the mountain.

 

A horse was painted there before

I stared, in part by flickering fading sun,

in part by prancing atmospheric canter, 

stroked by shifting wind and polar spin.

 

It is a running horse, its flame and umber mane

shaking, misting dusky sky with salty drops

prismed in the low sealight.

 

I think a heart beats in this cloud, pumping

full its billows; then it bellows, and the horse,

bolting from some unseen gate, aims eastward,

toward me, sprinting for the windward rain.

 

And from the fading droplets follow shadow

lives, shapeshifting, ancient dreams—from thick

Clydesdale to quarter horse, from pinto to a crimson

roan, forms unstill that we can never name.

 

Not photographs that freeze the sky, nor canvassed

paint, nor a mind muddled with a mundane brain

can stable them. They run their deeded prairie, fighting

for their own proud flesh, though fleeting, free. . . .

 

Their race, now done, the empty sky carries a shadow

over the western shore—a shadow that is always

there—dark, brindled with its fading sparks. And

 

I just might believe that cloud, light, and wind painted

forms like these to skinwalk with a spirit like my own,

a painted horse for me to ride, brushed into the sky

to rush me from a darkness, stained by my own spark.