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Hoofprints

Horse Poems

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

    Ride Back with Me

    Saddle up,

    ride back with me.
    You take the Thoroughbred you have lessons on;
    I'll ride my fat Morgan.
    We'll travel past buckboard wagons, buffalo hunts,
    conquistadores, cavaliers,
    and every sort of infidel invader.
    We'll skirt the edge of battlefields,
    follow the tinkling bells of pack trains.
    Cling as your mount changes beneath you—
    hack, charger, destrier, rouncy, pad.
    The stirrups will drop away,
    the girths will snap—
    hold fast.
    At last we'll ride dun ponies,
    bareback
    along the rims of glaciers.
    While they are horses we will ride them.
    Then we'll get off and walk,
    45 million years or so,
    our brown-spotted companions
    pattering beside us,
    on an ever-increasing number
    of toes.


    How the World Makes Horses

    She drives the continents apart.
    She heats and wets and dries and cools the land,
    Makes winter, summer, rainfall, grass.
    Then out of a nub of guinea pig—like flesh
    She spins her long fantastic thread,
    Pulling and twisting and whirling.
    She sets up land-bridges,
    Spills her animals across,
    Walls them behind ice,
    Islands them, and isthmuses, and peninsulas them,
    And reconnects when they are stubby ponies
    Or tall dry desert runners;
    Combines the separate kinds she has created,
    Throws away ninety-five percent,
    Preserves the remnant on a whim,
    And twines them at last with the human-thread
    She has been simultaneously spinning
    To create a two-ply
    Of considerable strength.


    The Grandmother

    I

    There were dinosaurs still.
    Whales ran over the earth like foxes,
    and everywhere strange blunt creatures—
    wolves with squared-off jaws,
    enormous rodents,
    sharp-toothed sheep—
    ran and ate and roared and grunted.
    No word had yet been spoken,
    and if some thinker had a thought
    we have not learned to recognize it.
    In the bushes hid
    a little brown animal,
    knee-high;
    Grandmother,
    Great-grandmother,
    Great-great-great—
    call her the Grandmother.
    Grandmother of horses.

    II

    Warm world.
    Wet world.
    Jungle-covered world.
    The Grandmother hid among jungle leaves,
    and ate them.
    She padded softly on soft ground.
    Mud squeezed between her toes.
    She couldn't see far—
    just far enough.
    Couldn't run fast—
    just fast enough.

    III

    The world changes slowly, but it always changes.
    A cool wind blowing, not as much rain.
    Tomorrow it's colder, only a sprinkle.
    Trees dying,
    Grass growing.
    Nowhere to hide.
    Better run.

    65 MILLION YEARS AGO TO 1.5 MILLION YEARS AGO, NORTH AMERICA


    I Just Wonder

    Were they pretty?
    Did they shine?
    Were they plump,

    Or sleek and fine?
    Were they striped
    Or were they spotted?

    Dappled, streaked,
    Or polka-dotted?
    Did they smell nice?
    And what sound

    Did their paws make
    On the ground?
    Did they squabble?
    In a fight

    Did they kick,
    Or scratch and bite?
    Did they squeal
    Like colts and fillies?
    Were they playful?
    Were they silly?

    They lived very
    long ago.
    Still, I hope
    Someday we'll know.

    60 MILLION YEARS AGO TO 1 MILLION YEARS AGO, NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, AND ASIA


    Evolution

    This video moves so slowly
    that motion is impossible
    to detect.
    The growth of a sequoia is rapid
    by comparison.
    Speed the tape up to make sense of it.
    A short-faced berry eater
    runs out of berries,
    switches to leaves.
    The trees thin.
    She drops her head to graze.
    Grass screens her eyes.
    Is something sneaking?
    Her face lengthens.
    Her eyes widen,
    as if in a cartoon,
    and migrate to the sides.
    Large and dark, perpetually shocked,
    they brim above the grass-tops.
    The foot beside her quickly cropping muzzle
    is not the same foot she began with.
    The paw that tracked soft forest floors
    has only three toes now;
    the middle one bears the weight.
    When she thinks she hears a sound
    that hard hoof spurns hard earth,
    and she's halfway across the prairie
    with her herd.

    Now adjust the audio frequency.
    There is a sound,
    also undetectable.
    It booms and grumbles through the ground
    like the voices of elephants, miles apart.
    We do not hear it with our ears.
    Our bare feet barely catch
    a small vibration.
    Do not expect to understand.
    The word is long and spoken slow
    and we are only partway through
    one syllable.

    60 MILLION YEARS AGO TO TODAY, NORTH AMERICA


    It's Alimentary: PowerPoint Presentation by Miohippus, late Oligocene Epoch

    There are only so many things to eat in the world,
    and several competitors for each.
    As we start to feel the pinch,
    I'd like to propose a bold strategy.
    If you'd dim the lights, please?

    It's all about cellulose—
    which, I don't need to remind you,
    is the main ingredient of leaves and grass.
    The bad news?
    We can't digest it without fermentation.
    The good news?
    Neither can the competition.
    But reports indicate they're using a new strategy:
    regurgitation.
    Yes.
    Believe it or not, they chew, swallow,
    ferment their food for a couple of hours
    in a couple of stomachs—they have four!—
    then burp it up and chew again.
    Labor-intensive,
    but it makes pretty efficient use of feedstock.

    The direction I suggest we take is this:
    ferment our feedstock in a single chamber.
    Disadvantage?
    Less efficient per unit of feed.
    Advantage?
    Speed. Our throughput time
    should be roughly half of theirs.
    That means we could eat faster—eat more!—
    because there's no downtime, no cud-chewing.
    Further advantage?
    We don't compete directly.

    Let them exploit the low-fiber market;
    we'll own high-fiber.
    Interestingly, this gets easier if we grow.
    The bigger we are,
    the less energy we need per cell.

    So, in conclusion, friends,
    I recommend we aggressively go after:
    Fiber. Speed. Size.
    It's niche-craft at its best,
    and I think it's going to surprise the heck
    out of the competition.
    What do you say?

    30 MILLION YEARS AGO, NORTH AMERICA


    Global Warming: What Survives Is Also Beautiful

    When you are thinking of ice melting,
    Of seasons heating, of sands spreading,
    When your heart despairs at beauty ending,
    Hug your pony.

    Out of rain forests drying and shrinking,
    Over the lost lands rising and drowning,
    Past ice reaching and ice withdrawing,
    Came your pony.

    Formed by changing that looked like ending,
    He can't see what the future's bringing,
    But around corners he's come galloping.
    Hug your pony.

    TODAY


    Przewalski's Horse

    The P is silent.
    Also the R and Z.
    Say "Shah-val-sky."
    Don't read the placard
    kindly provided by the zoo
    to misinform you.
    This is not a primitive horse,
    not ancestral
    to Blaze, or to Black Beauty.
    This horse is new,
    and beautifully adapted.
    The large nose warms
    the crystal air
    so it will not shock the lungs.
    Big feet easily
    traverse the bogs.
    Heavy body, short ears,
    long shaggy coat
    keep the claw of cold
    from reaching to the heart.
    If you want a name you can pronounce,
    remember:
    this is the horse the Ice made,
    the last Ice, the Würm Ice.
    Call her Glacial Horse.

    200,000 B.C. TO THE PRESENT, NORTH AMERICA AND EURASIA


    Endless Grasses

    We are galloping this sea of grass,
    Sunrise to sunset, sunrise to sunset.
    No sound but our breath,
    No sound but our galloping.
    No sound but the wind, and the tall grass shhhing.
    The sky is broad and blue and endless.
    Endless are the grasses.
    We crossed new land where none had been before,
    Land from the sea, land between the seas.
    Now on and on the grass stretches.
    On stretch the herds.
    Mammoth and reindeer, bison and rhino,
    And horses.
    Our hooves beat the earth-drum.
    Our voices speak.
    Doe to her fawn.
    Cow to her calf.
    Mare to her foal.

    ONE MILLION YEARS AGO,NORTH AMERICA TO BERINGIA
    TO THE EURASIAN STEPPE


    Two Legs

    But
    Who is this
    Two legs,
    Walking out of Africa?
    Sleek like an antelope,
    Shaggy like a bear.
    Smell like a meat-eater.
    Slow. Slow.
    He can't
    Do much
    Harm.

    ONE MILLION YEARS AGO TO 20,000 B.C., LEVANT, EUROPE, AND ASIA


    The Great Hunt

    Not a needle,
    Not a nail,
    Not a net and
    Not a pail.
    Not a shirt and
    Not a rope,
    Not an arrow,
    Not a hope.
    Thus it was in oldest times,
    Not in yours and not in mine.
    Now we sew our clothes of skin,
    Now we flake the spearpoints thin.
    Hunt the mammoth, hunt the deer,
    Hunt the horse, and eat, and cheer.
    Round the fire, tell the story,
    Tell the daring, tell the glory.
    Paint it deep inside the cave,
    You and I and they were brave.
    Thank them all for food they gave us,
    Fat and meat and hide to save us.
    It's a good life here, my daughter,
    Camped beside the flowing water.
    Hear the beating of the drum.
    Hear the vast herds, hear them come.
    This is how we'll always live.
    Herds will give and give and give.
    Mammoth roam and wild horse run,
    From moon to moon
    And sun to sun.

    35,000 B.C. TO 5000 B.C., SOUTHERN EUROPE


    Rope Halter

    It's a rope halter, isn't it,
    on this neighing pony?
    He's tethered, isn't he,
    And calling to his herd?
    You've seen a pony call like that,
    Tied, and his stablemate departing.

    But it's thirteen thousand years ago
    And we say, with all our knowledge,
    That no horse was tamed then and so
    None was haltered,
    And we'll never know.

    At a cave's mouth
    In a green and sheltered valley,
    Did someone have a pack pony?
    Milk pony?
    Decoy pony,
    tied out to lure the others to the spear?

    Or are these rope marks
    cut into the antler
    by our own imaginations?
    Is this lonely neigh,
    the openmouthed, left-behind look
    the mere slip
    of an unskilled craftsman's hand?

    11,000 B.C., FRANCE


    The Colonists

    They'd sent out colonists,
    wave on wave—
    the large, the small,
    the many-toed, the single-toed.
    Meanwhile,
    ice from the north devoured the homeland,
    divided and whittled the herds.
    Yet they lived
    many carefree generations,
    each believing the pastures
    had always been this size,
    each believing that the world
    ended at the ice-wall.
    This proved false.
    The people from beyond
    had seen horses before
    and knew well how to hunt them.
    The horses did not know how to be hunted.
    In the ice-bound meadows
    they had nowhere to run,
    no time to learn.
    So in America, where they began,
    horses ended—or paused.
    A long pause: some eleven thousand years.
    But out in the wide world
    horses continued,
    and at last returned to the home-place,
    to find the folks all gone.

    60 MILLION YEARS AGO TO 10,000 B.C., NORTH AMERICA DECEMBER 1493, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

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Excerpted from Hoofprints by Jessie Haas. Copyright © 2004 Jessie Haas. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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