THUNDER PONY

You unloosen your thunder-pony black hair. 
I taste the prairie in it. I smell the sun in it. 
I coil its copper around my fingers, 
wires with no resistance that circuit our hearts. 

Every time we lay like this, 
like the meshed roots of sod, we say 
there is nothing better, it can get no better. 
It always does and we always marvel.

We whisper the reasons. We hush the night 
with our murmurings. We howl with coyotes hungry 
for the moon. We swoon from the air heavy
with sage and the musk of crushed marigold.

We two-step around this night with words,  
form it with line and pigment. I scratch 
splatters of paint the color of flesh 
from your hair. Poems dangle like chips of flint 

singing in your ears. We need no map 
to get us back to the hoop-bounded 
prairie we galloped across, where we marked 
our way with the lightning nostrils of black 

cloud ponies, followed the cackle tracks 
of cranes on a north wind spiral into 
the sun, and left hoof print kisses 
of wind on the small of the prairie's back.

Endless grass, spinning hoops, 
wind in our faces, rain-soaked we ride 
the thunder, legs wrapped tight 
around its heaving flanks.



© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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