#37 Three around the Old Gentleman

 http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Dream_Song_37_Three_around_the_Old_Gentleman_by_John_Berryman_analysis.php

(37, 38, and 39 are tributes to Robert Frost)

In style and tone and subject matter, Frost has always been easy to identify with, but of course I’m not alone. He’s one of the best-loved American poets. He is popularly imagined as having had an irascible temperament, but that doesn’t matter anymore. As B. says, “off stage with all but kindness, now.” Obviously, this calls for a poem in remembrance of Frost.

 No attempt at imitation, just a poem that I’m thinking should be one with kindness in it.

I’ve had horses on my mind today after reading back over Frost and his horse giving its harness bells a shake. I spent a year working with mentally and physically disabled people and horses at a therapeutic riding academy.  I came to feel that the horses understood their charges better than we ever give them credit for, and that the animals gave willingly of a patient kindness. Not a new poem, one I wrote a couple years ago, with horses, patience, and kindness in it:

Past Horses

Back across expanses of chemical grass

       steaming iron lids
horses amble to the wooden gate
speak in round black eyes
say whatever lies
ahead for you, boy

with you these heavy mouths

       thick lips clapping
wet mouthfuls of grass
the hoofs we lift for you to pick.

They stand easy by the gate

       raising me to their backs
roll away, canter home
stand and clap their lips
on my shirt and tug
       keeping me still beneath
their tall legs
the hot heavy necks
       tails switching flies.

Wood in the barn

       smelling of manure and dusty coats.
The hay was sweet.
The horses are gone
past the divide
where ghost ponies
crowd the receding stalls and goad
us like reluctant horses
who look over our withers
for a fear to kick
see vapors, gallop

to what lay ahead

a yellow fire, a book
this yellow cat who curls
against my thigh
       catching my eye
       smacking her lips
       granting with timeless love of animals
that she may be stroked.
 
KZ