Why I Am Obsessed with Horses by Michael McGriff

February 6, 2015   Why I Am Obsessed with Horses   Michael McGriff

Because when I saw a horse cross a river separating two countries and named it Ghost Rubble it said No my name is 1935 because it also spoke in tongues as it crossed the black tongue of the water because it still arcs through me with its zodiac of shrapnel-bright stars because the river’s teeth still gnash against its flank and its eyes still have the luster of black china glowing black-bright in the glass hutch of memory because a horse’s skull is a ditch of wildflowers because a horse’s skull is a box of numbers a slop bucket resting upside down under barn eaves wind in an empty stockyard orange clay that breaks shovel handles with a shrug because a horse is the underwriter of all motion because a horse is the first and last item on every list of every season and because that night the air smelled green as copper and lath dust and that night as it scrambled up the bank and stamped past me it said Unlike you I am the source of all echoes.            Copyright © 2015 by Michael McGriff. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Barry Lopez wrote somewhere that landscape is the culture that holds all of human culture. In my own writing, I’m obsessed with the real and imagined landscapes of rural Oregon, especially that hinterland where landscape and dreamscape flow in and out of each other. In the case of this poem, which is one section of a book-length meditation, I wanted to directly address the imagery, idea, and mythology of origin.” —Michael McGriff   Michael McGriff is the coauthor (with J. M. Tyree) of Our Secret Life in the Movies (A Strange Object, 2014) and the author of Home Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). He teaches at The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and lives in Austin. Most Recent Book by McGriff   Home Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) "Horse Latitudes" by Jo Sarzotti "horse vision" by Julian Talamantez Brolaski "A List of Praises" by Anne Porter Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.