The white horse is in the yard again.
Not a ghostly white apparition, no
apocalyptic steed, just the neighbor’s
dusty old gelding, a solid muscularity
of grass-eating purpose, neck and chest
and haunches heavy on spindly legs
like an inverted pyramid, tearing
clumps of grass with a rip-chew-breathe
like an army of leaf-cutter ants in a
microphone forest.
My mood
is not dull like the old horse’s coat,
it is shiny black, iridescent, a raven
in a blizzard on a Mountain Ash,
gulping the last red berries.
I grind the beans to a fine powder.
The fragrance of coffee floods the room,
a hurricane, a tsunami, first breaking wave
of another black and white day shading to gray.
