With crayons and the clean sides
of our dads’ used paper from work
 
we lay on our stomachs
drawing horses. None of us
 
had seen a real horse.
We didn’t know
 
about saddles and bridles,
bits and breaking. We’d never
 
smelled horseshit, nor stood
next to an animal that weighed
 
a thousand pounds.
It didn’t matter. Mares
 
and stallions reared and galloped
through our imaginations.
 
We gave them wings, pink eyelashes,
and the power of speech.
 
We shivered as their huge
mouths searched our hair
 
for hidden carrots, lipped
sliced apples from our palms.
 
We wound their manes around
our fists, buried our faces
 
in their warm, dusty necks,
and dreamed, not of escape,
 
but of the not-yet-understood
animal power of our
 
not-yet-understood lives,
poised and ready to take off.