A Restless Song

They were twitchy, the horses;
late moonlight braiding their manes with shadows of spindly trees.
I watched them with my face leaning on my elbows at the windowsill
‘til I couldn’t sit there in the room any more
breathing in the hobbled horses, the pastures, sucking up the air
of western dreams I was born to be part of, no matter
my upturned wooden box under a bridge in eastern Europe.
My town was across a sea, and I was headin’ back this evening.
So what you hadn’t received my letter yet.
My suitcase bangin’ at yr door day after tomorrow
would be the envelope and my face the postmark.
You’d know just by lookin’ at me,
I was yrs for the keepin’, you just had to say yes.

Dawn happened and I settled my satchel on my shoulders,
walked down flights of stairs where
history was made on every single step
between now and three hundred years ago.
The breadman lifted his basket and the tabac squeezed coffee
through everyone’s nostrils like alarm clocks.
All that history wasn’t just war. Some of it was wedding shoes.

The horses shoved their huge faces into mine as I raised my throat
to their eyes and rubbed the bald marks where the straps
had shaved their shoulders of hair.
Soon enough the panniers would settle
down into the grooves and be loaded up for market.
I pulled their manes through my hands
and stood there talkin’ to them while I braided a bracelet
chock full of memories and a cuppla beads from my earrings.
These gypsy horses were my brothers
and the man who led them through the streets to market, well,
I coulda stayed, shared his bed for longer than I had,
but there was an ocean with yr name on it somewhere,
like a ticket under the waves, as if the sea foam
was a brand on the ponies’ asses
I had to ride: my antiquated surfboard.

The rock salt on the baker’s bagels
was the sea on the back of my throat;
I shared the last chunk of bread
with these my brothers and chased the tears
from my face with tangled manes.
I was born to travel with these men,
their wives, their horses, but yr face kept calling me back
to a country so civilized it was barbaric and I shuddered to think
how I was trading pony bells for car horns, the squeal of brakes.
I slipped on the bracelet, shook my fist to the western skies
and climbed up the embankment to streets,
to that civilization I scorned.

I turned one last time to memorize the horses, the bridge, when
I saw the man I had lived with many months, slam open the door
to his wagon and run after me, his face, struck by lightening
as he sees me leaving. The knowledge of this
is too much for either of us.
It is a distance, but we both can see
the tears on each other: rain and thunder.