What am I doing when I am riding Deo?  I am paying attention to how I feel – to the tension or softness in my hands, the balance or imbalance in my seat, the right and left evenness of the weight of my feet in my stirrups, the feel of the drape of each leg on his sides.  My hands, are they quiet or jittery?  I am feeling my spine as a flowing upward column? -And my sternum – has it fallen back like heavy wet leaves on the front of my spine or is if lifting like a moth forward and up, the way that he is flying under me.  Am I happy or worried, distracted or focused?  If I am frustrated can I drop that and find a way to be playful?

I am listening to what he is saying through his body.  When is he balanced and taking the bit from my hands, holding it steady in his mouth and moving forward with it like the little engine that could.  The other times when he fusses and tosses his head, and the reins get wavy, my elbows get unsteady, and he says,”No, take my mouth – not hard like that but firm, so that I can feel you there.”

I am seeing the arch of his neck and the small, soft fan of eyelashes on his inside eye. His ears are like two separate animals.  Pricked forward, I know that he is nervous, that he needs to feel me as a soft, deep, THERE in the saddle, saying, “Don’t worry, nothing there.”  They never waggle, like some horses who are confident, relaxed.  His are like wild antenna – one cocked back to me, the other poking out, around, here, there, or both whirling like windmills.  Then they fall apart like two halves of an apricot, and I know that he is settled for that moment.  I listen for those snorts and growls that tell me he is breathing, relaxing, settling.

I see the still green fields, lines of black fence, ducks on the pond, a truck grumbling by on the road.  There are horses, noses in the grass, in the fields all around us.  I feel the air – the cold snap of it on my face, the currents of chill as we move forward, slicing through this hour together.  The wisps of clouds in the pale sky,  thickets of hoof prints in the arena sand and the wintering sun warming us, him in his thick brown coat, me in my layers.

I imagine our hearts beating separately, then together and together and together.