All Fall Down

 

Horses caught

In California wildfires

I want to care about

The rest

Humans hurt and houses lost

Land that will not recover

Easily if at all

But I wonder if they were freed

Or caught on the wrong

Sides of fences

Were they kept in barns or stables

Or were they let free

Could they run from

Terror

 

Irony

It’s in their veins, the capillaries, the

Marrow of their bones and nuclei

Goading

Their extraordinary muscles

Gifted by Apollo to

Own the sky

 

Then what is left

When hair and flesh

Are burned, and bone at last

Fails and falls into ash

Will all unbound furies merge

As all mortalities

 

Risie into heaven where

Animal innocence cleanses all,

Teaching human souls

To gallop, how to dance

In resurrection

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/horses-burn-death-california-wildfires-los-angeles-creek-blaze?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=255824&subid=16706344&CMP=GT_US_collection