Category Archives: horses, dogs & more

Sep20

Deo, a conclusion

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For now, he stays.  I think that the universe read the deeper waters of my heart.  In the Abrahamic world, when you send a mixed message, or a message of desire that is tangled up with ambivalence or fear or doubt, it cannot deliver what you want until you have a clear, one note, resonant want.  I did not have that.

I have one now.  Universe, are you listening?  I want the woman that rode him and loved him to want to half or full lease him and continue to ride him, have fun with him and let him express all his playfulness and brilliance.  And I want some of that too.  I rode him again today and it was FUN.  Grinning the whole time.

HORSE

 With him
here, now
skin to skin
warmth spilling
one into the other.

breaths
a lattice of
drawing in,
drawing out.

the heart is a
cave that holds our
boisterous blood
our twinned pulses
bound in this moment

after all, the only and
most precious.

 

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Sep19

the heart of the Deo matter

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Photo:  Pam White

This was taken when Deo first arrived from Spain.  I was in love.  I still am.  That is the heart of it.

The world of the women who like him is oddly quiet.  We are all waiting.  I am waiting to be moved in either direction.  I am waiting for the foggy part of my heart to clear, and for what is best for him to ring me like a bell.  And that is what it is about.  What is best for him.  It is best for him to connect, to have fun, to be loved.  He loves to be ridden well and playfully – that is the part I am less good at.

Deo is not waiting.  He is being.  Today when I went to the barn he bopped me again and again with his nose as I stood talking to my friend Melvin.  “Hey!” he was saying.  “Hey!  Here I am!” I didn’t ride him because I pulled my back out rehearsing a new dance I am calling “Beast.”

So I let my patient Friesian, Sanne, carry me around the ring, to see if my hips would rock back into alignment.  At one point I closed my eyes and let Sanne carry me without “riding.”  Eyes closed, I could feel all the details of my hips, his back, and I could feel his mind taking over, protecting me.  I wept. Something sad, something thankful, something unknown.

 

 

 

Sep18

cave of breath

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Today feels like a good day to inhabit the cave of breath.  I am going to ride Deo today.  I am excited about that.  I am also remembering what my friend, the sculptor and painter Peggy Kauffman, said to me about her horses:  “I never sold a horse, I just learned how to ride them.”  When she said that, I thought, “Yes, but . . . ”  I could not imagine learning how to ride Deo after nine years of NOT being able to ride him.  Now I think that maybe that is possible.  That does not mean I will not let him go, but it does mean that I have stepped over a big, thorny fence in myself and between us.

The wind is strong and balmy outside, and it is warm enough to take my work outdoors and sit where it is dry, and let the breathing day inform my heart and mind.  My hope is that it will blow out the current darkness that comes with making a difficult decision, that it will help me  listen, open and allow.