The desert is a roofless room
where only God can see me.
My arm has become a lariat rope,
uncoiled in the air above a feral animal.
Lariat, from the Spanish la reatar, tie again.
It is never enough to tie something once.
I almost don’t recognize myself anymore.
The horse circles over the bones of a buried house.
I can touch its breath, but nothing else.
I may not get any closer for months, it’s so wary of me.
Before you call me foolish, tell me
you have never wanted to hold a myth.
Tell me you have never loved a morning more
because it held within its brightness the mystery of an end.
Antivenin is made with the poison
it is meant to mend. Like firehawk raptors,
we scatter burning branches over a wild land
that cannot reach us. Set it all aflame.
This place, too, seems too hurt for mending.
Because I care for the horse,
and can never return it to its home,
I can only take its wildness from it.
Gentle it, from the Latin gentilis,
which means of one’s own family.
I must take away its wildness
so that it has enough room for ours.