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Show Warren Three tries to get a worn-out boot through that stirrup, an arthritic heave, he's mounted one more time, grasps the reins softly, resting his ruined hands in the touch as the mare walks him home through fields he sees dimly but knows in his aching bones. Twenty years before I was born, he urged a horse now dead up switchbacks in the scree under the pass; shod hooves rang on sliderock, he grinned with love and hate for that high range: the moonscapes and meadows, the home valley cloud-covered, the natural music of his herd. Why he shied from town, from marriage; why he hoarded his pennies and lived for the ranch . . .what word for love that cleaves not to bodies but to a way, a hundred-mile gaze, the beat of rain on canvas? "Dinner's on!" "Where's Warren at?" In the snow by the south pasture fence, shoes unlaced, hands trembling tiny bubbles into the warm milk as the bum lambs feed, humming as the bottle empties. |
