Tag: horse

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Blacksmithing When I Was Seventeen

I respond to an urgent request;
a horse has thrush on its hooves.
Only three ways this could happen.
Either, an unclean barn with muck;
or, lack of daily cleaning of the hoof; or, both.
This incident practically spells animal abuse,
lack of care, waiting too long to admit their guilt.
I don’t have to scold them.
They already look ashamed.
Any longer, I would have to but the horse down,
place a bullet between its black eyes.
I must remove this black tar-like ooze
between the small triangle spot on the hoof’s bottom.
A horse must be held gently, sung to
in a la-la-la cooing,
like putting a baby to nap. I must be tender,
making slow, cantering love. I know how.
I’ve seen stallions mount and mate.
I hum. A horse’s heart must be at rest,
while scrapping, avoiding their heart galloping,
like after being penned in all winter,
released in spring, sprinting as if
trying to escape their skin,
their own pain. It gets agonizingly late.
Stars appear as horseshoes.
I must file down this wound with a rasp.
I don’t need to ask the owner
how he would like it
if I scraped the skin off his feet.
This rasp might feel more abrasive.
Hard. Metallic. Rubbing and rubbing.
I urge this horse to relax using lullabies.
I have to calm my own self. Slower.
Focus on curing.
I can always blame the owner later.
The horse senses attention and caring,
thanking me with a nuzzle.
The owner still can’t look me in my eyes.
You can’t cinch a saddle tighter than guilt.

*

When the Sun Scrunches Over the Starting-to-Awakening Landscape

A yellow butternut flower opens
and no bees appear to pollinate it.

I know in the grand scale of importance
this is not important,
considering wars, school shootings,
police-state crackdowns,
impending natural disasters spiraling out of control,
but my butternuts won’t grow without bees.

The news warns about bee collapse,
as if a building hit by a drone launching missiles.
I know these two are not similar,
but my blueberries never blossomed. No bees.

I frantically use a paintbrush inside butternut flowers,
transferring pollen from one yellow flower to another.
I can’t paint salvation, or resurrection,
or the end of trouble, but I can try.
Once again, the sun rises, unfolding like a butternut flower.

Once again, the sun rises, a day without dreams,
but plenty of untended consequences, a day of anguish.
Once again, once again, o lordy, once again,
when another butternut flower collapses due to the lack of bees.

O, silence of bees, the sun tells lies
that this will be a better day. Once again,
promises not kept. Once again, I dab a brush
into butternut flowers to save whatever I can preserve.

There’s no rain forecasted in the clear, blueberry sky.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian that trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022; and the 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize. His 27 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); “Love Never Cools When It Is Hot” (Red Wolf Editions, 2025). Forthcoming books include 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize, “One Thousand Origami Paper Cranes Fly Away in Search of Peace;” “Bone Chills and Arpeggios” (Main Street Press, 2026), “Sounds I Cannot Hear Clearly Anymore Add Up to the Sum of Silence” (Bainbridge Island Press, 2026).

Starting Gate by Cal Freeman

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Starting Gate

In a field of Canada thistle and clover
bald in patches with sand,
in the burial place for all the Rushlow’s horses,
a blue starting gate is anchored to the earth
by knotted Virginia creeper strands
as if, like those moving starting gates
on the backs of Cadillacs at harness races,
it might float away. If a horse walks through
a starting gate’s chute, it will load
into a trailer, the logic goes,
which is why the old man bought this one
and hauled it here three decades ago.
But if we extrapolate too much
from a situation, we lose sight
of the horseness of horses.
Of course, of course, it’s not
that the tautology’s shambolic.
Instead, it’s affirming to those
who already know. Louis trots bareback
on a white speckled mare named Silest,
her sides fat from having foaled the month before.
There was a time he was a trusted friend.
I don’t talk to him anymore.
The blue paint has leached from the gate,
and nobody’s serious about horse shows
or harness racing. In a field of Canadian thistle
and clover, the bones of buried horses
wait to be enraptured. When Silest died,
they placed her on a muddy tarp
and dragged her back here while bluebottles
suckled at her girth sores. I don’t think we cried.
I’d remember Silest years later
when my mother lay on a sleeping bag
on our basement floor surrounded
by family pictures, including a black-and-white
boyhood photo of my father riding
a Shetland pony in Tulsa, OK.
My mother’s skin sallow as the sawdust streaks
in Silest’s coat, her half-closed eyelids quivering
as though scattering summer flies.

*

Cal Freeman is the author of the books Fight Songs (Eyewear, 2017) and Poolside at the Dearborn Inn (R&R Press, 2022). His writing has appeared in many journals including The Oxford-American, River Styx, Southword, Passages North, and Hippocampus. He currently serves as Writer-In-Residence with Inside Out Literary Arts Detroit and teaches at Oakland University.

Stable by Betsy Mars

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Stable

Cinnamon glints like small fires
on the sleekness of the horse’s neck
in the late afternoon sunlight
as his head pulls right, straining
to be free of the bit,

to reach for grasses and the thistles
that line the trail, and I pull back –
a battle of wills – but he doesn’t know
what’s edible versus just green,
and it’s my job to guide

as the hills release their glow, and we are on the return
leg of the ride where the corral and good hay await,
and I’ll dismount, saddle sore but fully alive
to return to the schoolroom tomorrow,
with faith (mostly) that I’ll go home again.

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press. She is an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Poetry publications include Rise Up Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Sky Island, and Minyan. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Betsy’s photos have been featured in RATTLE’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Spank the Carp, Praxis, and Redheaded Stepchild. She is the author of Alinea and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz.