Of Want and Moonlight and Patience and Time by Julia Klatt Singer (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Of Want and Moonlight and Patience and Time
by Julia Klatt Singer

I shaped you out of clay,
set you on the brick patio, near the edge
so you would have grass to eat
when you came to life—
for who doesn’t start the world hungry?
And so too, that I could see you from
my bedroom window.

How many times did I wake
that night, look for my horse
in the moonlit backyard?

I was never afraid of the magic.
Was more afraid of how
I’d explain you to my parents and
to the neighbors, a lilac hedge away.

Dreamed you, your warm body
your soft eyes, the way you’d
nuzzle my hand, find something
good in it, good in me.

Come morning, you were still
the clay horse I had formed
small enough to hold in my hand
sitting on the brick patio, damp with dew.

It wasn’t until my first son was born
that I understood the magic—
forming something out of want
and moonlight and patience and time.

I am still waiting for you
my chestnut pony. Dream you
grazing in an open field, the sun
on your back, your unblinking gaze
as I feed you apple from my open hand.

PAINTING: Blue Horse I by Franz Marc (1911).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As I child I remember waiting for a number of things—holidays and birthdays, school to start and end, rides home, and sermons to finish. I have made peace with most of those, learned to let time enter me, the way I enter it—moment by moment. But I’m not sure I ever got over this dream horse.Was thoroughly convinced I could make a horse and make it mine. Give it a body. Give it moonlight. Want it like I wanted life; to spring forth because I could picture it, smell it, feel it. I shaped it out of clay. I could picture the horse it would become. Our backyard was small, but I’d ride it wherever it wanted to go. I could not have loved or wanted that horse more. And I felt the disappointment. The hard fact of my love and want not being enough, to make this horse real.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julia Klatt Singer is the poet-in-residence at Grace Nursery School. She is co-author of Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul (Coffee House Press), author of In the Dreamed of Places, (Naissance Press), A Tangled Path to Heaven, Untranslatable, (North Star Press), and her most recent chapbook, Elemental (Prolific Press). Audio poems from Elemental are at OpenKim, as the element Sp.  She’s co-written numerous songs with composers Craig Carnahan, Jocelyn Hagen, and Tim Takach.