Sometimes I miss the old days

When I could just come home and ride,

Or be ridden

Knowing there was always

Sweet hay, clear water

A single horizon, visibly unknown

I’m double-blinded, on foot again

Though I feel the wind sawing,

Always at my back

Parting the tall grass before me

Like a sea, whispering secrets

And sometimes songs come back

Shouting wisdom from a decade ago

Reduced down to a vibration

I call nothing and everything my own

Echoes in my body

This ringing in my bones

Sometimes I seem to be

Just a voice

Inhabiting someone else’s head

Something dreamt

I could live with that, if that’s what this is

Word first, motion second

How thought precedes me,

I can at least relinquish that

Power that came before, that binds me

Pulls me onward with a joy

Only a working animal could understand

Barley, oats

Wild and crafty, woven between wheat

Insinuated themselves into necessity

Willing dispersal onto every distant island

Toast the virtue of mutual meeting of needs

Like the fruit of true vines

Spirits distilled from blood, full-bodied

Quenching thirst and inciting fire

Until every roof proclaims its liberty from decay

Partnership,

Not domestication

This is how new worlds are made.