Watched the moon rise behind a tree big enough to send cracks through the fire that grew slowly as the earth shifted out of her way. When she pulled away into the sky, she turned yellow, like the yoke from a chicken egg. The other horizon had just claimed the sun.
I stopped and watched until it was halfway clear, wishing I’d had my phone to take a picture, but also glad I didn’t. A picture can’t record how dizzying it is to see the earth move, to know this Worm moon is marking the beginning of spring. Our days have warmed. We can draw water from the side of the house instead of the spigot in the basement. It’s like finally setting down the sack of feed in the garbage can. Standing up- right feels like walking on air.
We just turned the clocks ahead–I hate turning the clocks ahead–it’s disorienting. I keep thinking the old time is the real time. And stay up till midnight because it’s really 11, my bedtime. There is more sun mornings and evenings. We’re racing towards the longest day of the year too quickly. After June 21 the days will shorten again. Winter coats will begin growing in August. And winter will be upon us, and time will slow, with February the longest month, again. But it’s hard for the mares when the weather turns from below zero to 60 degrees in a week.
I know. I know, I should be delighted that I don’t have to wear my vest and long underwear, but I want to pull covers over my head when the beautiful weather calls me outside. It’s time to clean the manure from the paddocks and flip the mats to clean the stink underneath. It’s time to powder the floor. Bruce used the tractor to scoop up a big pile of manure one morning when the ground froze. But the ground is soft now. I take it out by the muck bucket. I’ve not made much progress.
The mares’ coats are still thick pelts, with the weather warm enough to work them, but the ground is too soft. I don’t want to pock mark the fields, and I don’t have the confidence to ride Tessie on the road if she hasn’t had the chance to run, buck and fart. And there’s that damn fear, like acid coffee fluttering around my mind, making me hesitate to just get on and ride Tessie or hitch Morgen for a spin around the neighborhood. (Bruce wants us to wait until the fields firm up so we can work her there. I remember Klaus not wanting her to come last spring until his fields tightened.)
While my fear may mostly be false, when you’re working with horses, you are working with an animal that can kill or maim you if they are frightened or forget you are there. If I flick the whip and Tessie thinks I’ve been unfair, she will set her neck and go where she wants. I let her go. She will face me if my mind goes away from her. Morgen will grab my sleeve. I swear this work with my horses is based on relationship, on trust, on their knowing me and my knowing them. My joy in riding is based on our friendship. I almost feel Tessie’s permission to ride and Morgen’s to drive. I can feel their desire to be with me and their call to be sit deeply in my body, draw my attention to them.
I read on Facebook how people are over the moon with their Fjord horses, how they just get out and get on and ride. I’ve envied their mild winter weather. Bruce Cockburn writes in Rumors of Glory how horses broke his heart open, so that he could finally love without reserve. I wonder what is wrong with my scarred over heart, that keeps me hesitating to spend time with them, except the memory of Tessie bolting, with stiff-legged bucks, how she wanted me off. Years before that, when I was a toddler, a horse snatched at the horse I was riding, bit me instead. I jumped off in a wail of tears and an echo of fear that took time and familiarity with a horse to get over.
Spring time makes me tired with its call to step into the warm weather and shovel the paddocks, work the mares. God’s good green earth, the horses with their big engines are too much for me. I heard Ashley Davis Bush admit that she likes bad weather, because she likes indoors work, reading and writing in an interview with Linda Schreyer. She wasn’t ashamed either. She is a grief counselor and knows this about herself. Well, so do I but it’s hard to admit. I don’t feel guilty when it rains and I stay inside to write. Too much sunshine can be a weary thing.
It’s a holy time, this in between time, how Pastor Kinnear is teaching Lent this spring. Time itself is holy and speeding like my bolting mare, bucking, while I can’t find my seat, and I am at her mercy. Aren’t we always at time’s mercy galloping full bore, those sunsets, moonrises, so fast they make a person think about that final hard thud, grass jamming into their crotch, and realize how very precious something common as taste or smell becomes when we turn our minds, our senses to pay attention?
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