By LINDA DRATTELL
Several people told me they identified with my poems about caring for my horse Vegas in his old age. Despite the advice of his barn manager, at no point was I willing to put him down for the sake of convenience or to find a younger horse I could ride. She hounded me to put him down, suggested I do the humane thing: he was losing weight, his arthritis was bad, and she warned that he wouldn’t survive the winter. She let me know she had stopped feeding him. I took over bringing him his grain and he gained his weight back—which, for some reason, greatly annoyed her. She also told me she had stopped letting him out to graze with the other horses, did not clean his stall, and then complained to me about the flies his mess caused. I took over these chores as well, letting him out of his paddock each day to graze with the other horses and cleaning his stall. I knew he was too old and weak to transport to another farm and had been willing to pay her almost twice the going rate to take care of him. She was making it clear she had no interest in caring for him and that his life was worthless.
I decided to prove his worth—if not to her then to myself—and began writing about him.
At first the poems were serious ones, and they were included in my poetry collection, Remember This Day. As I spent time with him and his buddies in the pasture, I noticed the quirkiness of each horse’s personality – not just of Vegas but of the whole slew of them. I began writing poems capturing their humor and included these poems in my new poetry collection, The Lighter Side of Horse Manure.
I had begun writing poetry in earnest a couple of years earlier, though I started with the genre when I was a teenager. There was something hypnotizing to me about the writing form, what you could do not only with words but with spaces. It’s like drawing a picture of what you see. It makes you feel present. You notice things you hadn’t noticed before, allow thoughts to develop about the here and now. I began to notice connections between what occurs on the farm and what occurs within our society. We are not much different from our animal friends.
I studied different poetry forms: rhyming poetry, prose poetry, sonnets, ghazals, and so forth. Some of what I observed naturally lent themselves to specific poetry forms. For example, I chose the ghazal form to describe the farrier coming to shoe my horse. The ghazal has rigid rules: the poem must have between five and fifteen couplets ( a couplet is a stanza comprising two lines), the first couplet has the same refrain at the end of both lines, each of the remaining couplets must have repeated refrains or end with the same word preceded by rhyming words, and the name of the author must be included in the final couplet. Confusing in theory, but read the following poem out loud and you will see how the ghazal form enables you to imagine my horse’s hooves hitting the ground:
Hooves
Confined in his stall he waits with penned hooves,
The farrier’s late to fix and mend hooves.
He hates being hemmed in, prefers to romp,
To stomp with his field mates, prance and wend hooves.
He craves the freedom to gambol and play,
To run with the herd, together blend hooves.
The farrier files and snips his hoof walls,
Applies her deft skills to trim and tend hooves.
After Fay’s treated his feet he’s released,
Freed, my horse runs, once again, to rend hooves.
A simple rhyming scheme, on the other hand, portrays my horse’s orneriness:
I Imagine Him Saying Thank You
My horse gave me a funny look today
As if he felt he just had to say,
“Again, you carry my manure away
Such doggedness and care you display
And I want to ask you—Who gives a shit?
You watch me eat, measure my weight
Act enthralled to see that I ate
You ask, Enough? when I stare at the gate
Is this a natural human trait
Really, I ask you—who gives a shit?
We’ve one shot at life yet you share yours with mine
carrying buckets and shovels seems fine
I don’t really care how you spend your time
But yes, without you, my health would decline.
So, thank you—now get on with your shit.”
And to describe the farm and surrounding countryside, I used the palindrome form which can be read forward or backward (think of the name Hannah). The palindrome form describes both the peaceful setting of the farm and its inverse mirror image, as if reflected in the quiet beauty of a lake:
Home
Home is pasture.
Wind caressing grasses
showcase vibrantly verdant hills.
Darting squirrels abounding.
Geese honking
mimic horses neighing.
Pigweed overrunning goldenrod.
Piled manure aging
near prepared compost.
Aging lone oak, steadfast.
Swallows swooping and
starlings murmuring beckon
clouds draped heavily.
Renovated barn is backdrop.
Trough full.
Peaceful ambience.
—Home—
Ambience peaceful.
Full trough.
Backdrop is barn renovated.
Heavily draped clouds
beckon murmuring starlings
and swooping swallows.
Steadfast oak lone, aging.
Compost prepared near
aging manure piled.
Goldenrod overrunning pigweed.
Neighing horses mimic
honking geese.
Abounding squirrels darting.
Hills verdant vibrantly showcase
grasses caressing wind.
Pasture is home.
Writing poetry provided me with a new way to interact with my aging horse, enjoy his company, communicate on another level, convey in spoken language what he had to say through a soft glance, a purposeful grunt, an appreciative kiss. I felt as if we laughed together at the aches and pains of old age, commiserated about life’s inconveniences, and shared a mutual understanding of things that can only come with loving someone for many years. As you get older, you talk less but communicate more. Vegas left for greener pastures two years ago, but writing about him and his pasture buddies strengthened my connection with him that has lasted well past his passing.
