Of Horse
In the belly of the horse there is wonder…
I opened my eyes to a squirrel this morning. Halfway through my meditation. He held something in his little hands, turned this around the way I used to move butterscotch dipped cones when I was a kid. This squirrel, all squirrels really, come to me as men. As boys actually. The way they jump and hop and play. The way they stop to see if they are being watched.
I like the darkness when I meditate. I like to know that thoughts do not need my permission to come. So that later in the day, when I create space on this land there are some things that call to me, things that want to stay for no reason other than whimsy. Sure I can take the broken pots and rotted wood, some of the bike rims attached to bamboo and anything else that has sat for over a year without being used.
The pile grows high in the back of my truck. The space thins. Surprised butterflies look for places to hide from the swooping birds. This horse, the one who tells me that he would like to stay, now sits atop my back fence to foster curiosity in the hearts of those who pass. His face never changes. A profile eye content with the sitting. Content with being the only horse on the land.
This is the destiny of plastic formed by the hands of man, to becomes something more than a blob that sits in the earth, to become a story, to know that there will be no warning on the day I lift him from the fence, but now, having given this horse sentience I am reticentttt to let him go. I have a hard time imagining the big machine smashing the hollow of his plastic body.
And maybe there is only air inside of there, but could you imagine the mystery held by a child who looks up, who wonders how a horse climbed a fence, who wonders whether fences actually exist on a planet where only horses live.
What more gifts might we give children like this? How many more spaces could be opened, could be curated in a manner that animals and children live together, if only for the moment, if only the way this cello breaks the beeping of the machines run by men outside, smashing down the street. Pounding the pavement.
Did you know that’s a figure of speech? Pounding the pavement. I believe that it means what one does when looking for a job. His feet pound the pavement. The pavement is the street, the city sidewalk. And maybe there is another way. What about gliding through the forest or swimming into a lagoon where you might be paid to observe and ask questions about what is already happening? What if you were to look and see what takes place in the absence of man?
There are many plastic horses all throughout the world. And there are many cardinals. And I have yet to tell you of moments ago, how a blur came to me. Red. Said hello during my lunch and I just nodded. I wondered where his wife was, old Cardinal Red, flying solo late this morning. And the other birds, they say to him that there are enough orange berries for everyone.
People have been asking about beautyberries. On the internet they were. In a forum filled with questions like is it edible and does it repel mosquitoes. I did not offer what I know because the question was not asked. Beautyberries are one of the last things the birds go to, once everything else is gone, they come to take in the insipid but purple berry.
The beep is back. Louder than the cello now. The men pound the pavement. I wonder about the horse, about wind. I wonder about how what i grow might spread. I wonder about a hundred years from now and if descendants of the chickens that I see will still walk around the 9th Ward.
I wonder what the spirit of my dog thinks, if spirits can think, if energy has a vibration that knows. And I wonder about the inside of that horse and whether the man who molded the plastic could have ever known that inside what he encapsulated would be the wonder of a toddler in a stroller just beyond a fence in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.
