About Nance Van Winckel More Poems by Nance Van Winckel Having to Decide Amongst Ourselves Man Shaving a Woman's Leg Give it Up Little Blue Heron Keep the Engine Running What My Father Would Say Order Nance Van Winckel's latest book from Amazon!

Nance Van Winckel I Watched Her Go Four years old atop a gray gelding, her mouth open as if lip-synching a song, her head tipped back. Eyes closed. My sister's horse ran away with her. Too wide a measure of our meadow. It's late and I must keep it simple. We'd been cantering past a post topped by a coiled bull snake. Even then I wasn't afraid of where the spooked horse would take her. Old Smokehouse, we called him, as gentle as the day was long. She held on. I galloped behind, as far as I could- to just outside a city. A bustling parade of immigrants. Her horse slowed and stepped among the market stalls of baskets, fishes, hammered tinwork. I watched her go. In the years that trail after, I'll wake and watch myself asleep. I'm the eyes on a high fence who see the breath go in and come out. The horse drags his reins across the coverlet as he runs. The sleeper searches the silvered skies for what's just galloped over her hip, up her thighs. When we told the story again, the horse had brought her back. And she'd laughed. Begged to take another ride. More, please, once more. Still thirty years and three states away from dying. Of our childhood house, only a chimney is left. Its stones huff and puff against the drowsy clouds.