Covenant

Susan Bucci Mockler

 

The horses thought they were waiting for you
to bring them in from the pasture, in from damp

 

night air, where sweet alfalfa, oats, hay, would be,
where they always are—the horses names etched

 

in wooden plaques over their stalls: Comet, Midnight,
Scarlet, black iron latches securing them in, safely—

 

but they were waiting for you to make them whole
again, ache of yesterday’s memory—evolving from

 

mere shapes, nothing visible but their eyes, squinting
to see their way out of the dark to you, warm air

 

steaming from their nostrils, withers, hocks: trot,
then canter, like a drum coming out of the darkness—

 

weightless gallop, hooves suspended above ground,
offering of loyalty and service. But you’ve been waiting

 

too—for them to see you, to turn your mist into body—
witnesses to this fundamental bearing of your days.

Susan Bucci Mockler’s poetry has appeared in peachvelvet, Maximum Tilt, Pilgrimage Press, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, The Northern Virginia Review, Gargoyle, The Delmarva Review, The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Cortland Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Voices in Italian Americana, and the anthologies, The Forgotten River, The Great World of Days, Arlington Writes, My Cruel Invention, and Furious Gravity. She teaches writing in Virginia and DC and is currently at work on the project, Many Voices, One Community: The Healing Power of Poetry, supported by a grant from the Arlington Arts Commission