horsegrass

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 12 years ago

I met a horse. This horse had several large brown friends, in white socks, a kind of uniform they wore with insouciance, all of them living apparently in a big barn with straw trodden into its stained concrete. Horse life is boring, I suppose, when it’s under a roof. The horse fixed me with his eye as I was rambling by the river and compelled me by a kind of horsenosis to climb the hill and face him. We stood and stared at one another. I thought of the apple core I had thrown away in the brush. I told him, I haven’t brought you anything because… I didn’t know you were here. Somehow the horse or the grass itself put in my mind the idea that there was fresh green grass spurting everywhere plentifully out of the ground, only – he demonstrated with his head, ducking under the rails, and he had to do it twice before I got it – in a ring around the fenced enclosure all the grass was eaten to the nub. Poor horse. I said, “Would you like some grass? You can have some,” and bent to rip it. Laid my hand flat and offered it to his big lips and teeth. He showed me by knocking the stalks on the rail it is preferable to tear off the woody stems and clots of dirt. I should have thought of that. Next clump I harvested, I tore the stems across so he could eat the whole bundle, which he did. The other horses pawed impatiently at the rails. What stops them from jumping the fence? Only politeness, I imagine. I’m home now, hearing people moving about upstairs and the surprising bleat of sheep and throaty clong of sheep’s bells from a garden with no house in it, two houses away. I can see an Ikea stool belonging to the next-door children and the blooming wild plums on the far side of the river that grow in clumps and look like smoke. It’s growing dark now and the Indonesian lamps inside the house make yellow splashes on the scenery.