THREE HORSES

(after James Wright’s poem “A Blessing”)

Some years ago, on a bus returning from Montreal,
we passed a wind-fetched, grassy field. Three horses
stood at the fence, chestnut-brown with brilliant manes.
Through tinted glass wet with rain, I stared at them
and their amber eyes stared at me. And as real as if
I had once known them in that field and then left them,
my heart began to stutter. James Wright calls it a blessing,
how in those heightened moments we might
step out of ourselves and into blossom.
Was my blessing the chestnut horses?
Or was it my heart rising like the morning?

*published on London Transit’s Poetry in Motion series.