Winter Scene at Evening Stables 

Let’s say, five o’clock mid-winter. 
You’re down at evening stables, 
your quilted Carhartt’s on. 

Bare brown hills roll pink with color 
borrowed from tomorrow,
white in every word you mumble to the dogs. 

Your neighbor’s barn: a line of yellow squares, 
as yours must shine for her. 

She is younger than you are, has yet to get 
her horses in.

Each halter on its hook, water buckets full, 
rakes and pitch forks put away, 
you’ve had your whiff of summer 
in open bales of clover and alfalfa hay. 

The horses have the look they get—
thoughtful, far away—chewing grain.

Oh sure, you think about Tahiti. 
Or living life one wall away from other lives. 

How it would be to take your coffee back to bed 
and read till nine.  

But then you’d have to lock the house. 
Always pee inside. Weed and mow 
for stranger’s eyes. God knows what all. 

Halfway up the hill, the dogs turn and wait. 
Your neighbor leads two horses in, 
as yours stand deep in appetite.  

Their slopes of neck and rump 
and counter-curving spines gleam 
under yellow light. Another ordinary day. You flip the switch and shut the door. 
Whatever “ordinary” means.

— Wendell Hawken is poet laureate of Millwood, Va. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers and is the author of several celebrated chapbooks.