Broken

for Peg Millet

She was a horsewoman, you could feel it

in her hands, the way she held herself

like a pair of leather gloves worn soft

like a promise made in prison.

She’d passed from the past into the future intact

and could ride anything, no matter how broken.

She’d explained to me once that horses are prey

despite their size

to fears long since extinct

and so assay the electric air

with the whites of their eyes

the red tremor worn saddlesore, rolling

like thunder in the vein—

and if therapeutic, were only because they were

incapable of lying, the way we do

to ourselves

about ourselves.

These vestigial predators

remain, she said, behind bars

at times, at others at large—

and placed the words without hesitation,

like hands upon a flank.

She was a woman  

of no uncertain gravity;

who had been thrown,

who had survived,

who could be trusted.