The Horse

For Lucy

Real drawing is a constant question,
is a clumsiness, which is a form
of hospitality towards what
is being drawn.
—John Berger

there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see
or the child’s older self, a poet…
—Adrienne Rich, “Dreamwood”

She’s at a loss, my daughter, in the drawing
She makes, a girl and her horse, as a gift
For me—a frontispiece she pens,
Beside my name, which she inscribes
As if it were her own, on the first page
Of my new notebook:
                   Freckles and a quandary
Upon her face; one foot in one camp,
The other in another. Her face asks
A question to which her body wants
An answer.
               And beside her, a horse, and
It leans her way, the way she’s drawn it,
This pony, infinitely tender, waiting for her,
The girl in the picture, to notice that she,
The girl with the pen, already has
What she always wanted, standing
At her side.
                When I lived with her, she rode
Me sometimes; sometimes, though she’s nine,
And is beginning to forget, she rides me still.
I have loved horses and ridden them, and
Every birthday and Christmas, knowing
Her hope was hopeless, she’s asked for one,
Which never came.
                   We’ve loved horses together,
She and I, and her hope for horses was our
Love for each other, and I drew them
For her from The World of the Horse,
And from storybooks I gave her because
I couldn’t give her a horse.
                            We loved each other
Many ways, but how we both loved horses
Was how we loved each other best.
                                                If I tell you,
Then, we are the horse she’s drawn, she and I,
Or that I am the horse and she is the girl,
You’ll know why, and you’ll understand
How her drawing cries my longing
For her, the way it sings her longing
For us.
         Opening my journal, tonight, I see
The two of us, hopeful and kind and confused,

Wondering how we stand now and what
Will become of all we loved, and what will
Become of us.
 
                   Knowing, as children
Know—and drawings that are real—much
More than she knows, my girl has drawn
A question to which I—to which we—are
The answer in the horse’s eye: Yes, I want
To tell her; yes.
                   What you long for, my love,
Stands beside you, a father beside his girl,
All you ever wanted, a horse that will not
Run, an answer more tender than time.
                               What you long
For longs for you, and even when you
Cannot see me, and you are not sure
I know, I know.
                   I stand beside you, my girl,
And I stood there all along, and I stand
Beside you ready, all the days of your life.