Green Linden Press

Survival                                                                                                               —Sarah Kortemeier


A horse on a photo shoot in California
was frightened by the sound of surf,
so he ran straight into the ocean.
He ran two miles on a road
that didn't exist, and for an afternoon,
he was holy: a god small enough
to face the surface of the world, to pit
lung and innocence and muscle against
its terrible curve.
In the hands of his rescuers,
the horse was still swimming.
The ocean looked like something gentle.
He threw his head up, breathing,
and the men laughed and called
for a counterweight.
His front legs started up again.
Two miles out to sea,
so much death and space, a sunset ahead
of them all, and they got the harness on. 

(This poem is available in our store  
as a broadside signed by the author.)