He was, as advertised, a good horse.
We became like an old married couple—
fat and sheeny at thirty, he could still buck me off.
A vet said cancer, in November, before frozen ground
and icy buckets, before a long night’s thrashing
against barn boards when no help would come before dawn.
He grazed the last sweet threads of pasture
in a halter with his name in polished brass.
Someone he didn’t know stroked his neck.
Someone who knew what was coming inserted a needle.
His legs folded, a wisp of grass between his lips.
He was a good horse. It was the death he deserved.
It is the death I deserve. I am telling anyone
who will listen. I too have been good.
