Robin Behn / Where the Horse Went   

    Once upon time, the horse took old distance woman on a very long trip. So long
that she finally said would it be o.k. if I fall asleep against your neck horse and horse said
what oh uh I must have been walking in my sleep. So they went on like that for a while.
Into the soft sleeping distance. Their footprints, if they had any, would have been a little
deeper than the ones you and the horse leave when you are out and about.

    After a while of riding through a clearness clear as the water in the tank before the
first fish goes in, the horse and the old woman came to a place where there was a circle of
light. The old woman yawned and stretched out her two legs—she looked like an upside
down scarecrow—to make the light just the right size. And the horse sighed and stretched
out his four legs—and of course then down they went! And then they had a nice better sleep.
And then they woke up hungry. And so they ate some light.

    What?

    Oh, when you eat light it fills back up right away.

    The horse stayed with the old woman quite a while. Eating the clear. Drinking the
clear. Trotting around the clear. It was very easy on the hooves. Bales and bales of clear.
Clear dreams. Clear jokes. Clear apples, clear beer, clear deer. Then the old woman said I
think you should go back to the boy. And the horse said I think you should go back to the
boy. So they thought about that for a while.

    Then the old woman who was always good at planning trips with crisp accurate picnics
said listen horse I think the clearness might be a horse-crossing-only kind of clearness. So
they thought about that for a while.

    Then the horse said well ok but while I’m gone will you start making us a nice clear house
which of course she had already started doing.

    And so the horse went back. For the boy.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Winter, 2005, Issue 2, Volume 1