Excerpt from Springbook

by Gabriel Antonio Reed

The first time the horses escaped

the farmer’s voice waterspouted 

the spring house The caretaker 

heard the burble blow into a wave 

& swam to the door 

What’s happened he said

The storm spooked the horses 

I saw them kindling in the trees

Wait for me 

She stood dark among the flashover

dogwoods her hair 

a storm windowsill The caretaker

touched her arm Take this

he handed her a can Shake it

What’s in this

she said Grain & another flash 

But how will they hear through

the thunder   They lifted the bells 

the horses needling the treeline 

The lightning stitched them together

Their hands arced jingled 

This won’t work     she screamed

the caretaker sinking with each clash 

refracting blueways on his tin in his eyes

She thought he might cry 

She thought he might curl

into the creek     time make a stone of him

rippling the flow 

like a cloud bending the blue 

A tree would nettle up his limbs 

which would shake 

He shook his hands     & the thunder rifted 

the dampening music

mist in a tempest tinny rainslip 

The ancient paint horse twitched 

heard through the storm cant

the dun colt still gliding

under the din He was young 

bristled & jaunted 

flower-naïve down to the bloom

As the clouds rose 

she wanted to run for him 

like dead branches bowstringing starlight 

She saw

his ruddy head reburn each flint 

Wait the caretaker called

hunched & looking upward

Let’s circle them together

& waving our hands guide them

his soft eyes     thundersnow

behind the rain-beads damming 

on his hat They waved & called

like singing as they went 

the paint pressing her white nose

into a folio of blueblack leaves

the dun       not afraid but free

his shoulders timbering the brush apart 

The caretaker leaned on the paint 

hid behind her threshing 

wheat in the winepress 

The farmer hummed & the colt 

locked his legs A branch 

above his ear had paused the rain drum 

He stopped as if he knew that voice