Blue horse muckwa & animal rescue

For Rabiah Seminole

At last– a place of refuge!.
Pasture and meadow– an old horse ambles into quietude,
the skittish mule once beaten with metal rasp stands in clover.
Pause, Visitor, and rest, for the gift here is time,
and time is to be lived–
ask for nothing more, not for mercy, certainly, nor for kindness.
A starved feline dines alone near the tack room
– wary eye, neck tense, tail between her legs–
under the trees, a pit-bull yawns,
forgetting cold nights on chain, fear and bloodsmell of the arena,
but the scars go deep, deeper than memory–
sometimes memory squats in the barn, grinning,
wearing a long tooth and the mindless face of Man.
After muddy track and tumult, noise of the crowd,
after hot irons, whips, blindness, enforced lameness, starvation,
after glaring environment of the breeding pen–
here, one may even find room for the human heart.

(Mecklenburg County, Va.)