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Collected Poetry

    (rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

In California

  Ornamental Horses 


An hour before dusk the little boys
walk out into the rust-colored weeds
and search for tadpoles in the stagnant water
at a time when the wind often diminishes.
So nothing moves
except for the knees in their blue jeans
and the bare backs and the arms and heads
and the restless leaves on the cottonwood
      above them.
I watch as each approaches his separate pool.
One boy takes a clear plastic bag from his
      pocket
and the pocket remains out like a flap.

Water moves slowly and peacefully in the canal
but I cannot see it from this window.
Nor can the boys who are as quiet as the water
that passes beyond them and the vine bank.
They are so quiet I suspect any noise
will interfere in their business.
Or so it happens that
they are quiet this evening.
Yet in the end they succumb to the wet
and squirmy product of their capture.
He starts giggling.  He holds out his hand
and calls for his brother to look.

The sharp, illuminating light does not yet
      distract us.
In fact the boys manage to show themselves
very cleverly in this light
among the rust-colored weeds and stagnant water.
Beyond them on the land beside the canal
two horses have come up to the barbed-wire fence
and swung their heads out and above the wire.
Each horse watches quietly with one eye.
There is a golden sheen to their coats
but they are the same color as the weeds.




 
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