Inventing a Horse, poem by Meghan O’Rourke

INVENTING A HORSE
by Meghan O’Rourke

Inventing a horse is not easy.
One must not only think of the horse.
One must dig fence posts around him.
One must include a place where horses like to live;

or do when they live with humans like you.
Slowly, you must walk him in the cold;
feed him bran mash, apples;
accustom him to the harness;

holding in mind even when you are tired
harnesses and tack cloths and saddle oil
to keep the saddle clean as a face in the sun;
one must imagine teaching him to run

among the knuckles of tree roots,
not to be skittish at first sight of timber wolves,
and not to grow thin in the city,
where at some point you will have to live;

and one must imagine the absence of money.
Most of all, though: the living weight,
the sound of his feet on the needles,
and, since he is heavy, and real,

and sometimes tired after a run
down the river with a light whip at his side,
one must imagine love
in the mind that does not know love,

an animal mind, a love that does not depend
on your image of it,
your understanding of it;
indifferent to all that it lacks:

a muzzle and two black eyes
looking the day away, a field empty
of everything but witchgrass, fluent trees,
and some piles of hay.
***
“Inventing a Horse” appears in Meghan O’Rourke’s collection Halflife (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2007), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet, essayist, and memoirist Meghan O’Rourke was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1976.  She is a graduate of Yale University and holds an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.  From 2005-2010 O’Rourke was poetry co-editor for the Paris Review, and in 2000 she was a fiction editor for the New Yorker.  Since 2001 she has been a contributing writer for the online magazine Slate. O’Rourke’s books of poetry include Halflife, which was a finalist for Britain’s Forward First Book Prize, and most recently Once.  She is also the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye, a chronicle of mourning written after the death of her mother.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York. (SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org)

IMAGE: “”Uma Horse” by Nomad Art and Design, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.