The sky is an infinite contusion. Clouds appear
to be shoving their way through to Somewhere.
Nearby birds avoid the bullying
and fly clear of it.

Someone in a hat watches the pair;
he is hidden by a small rise and a little scrub grass.
The sea is in the distance, hints at places
neither the man nor his pale friend will ever go.

The trail ends where they stand—
horse and man. One hand holds the reins
near the horse’s mouth, the other hand is folded
onto his middle, holding back—what?—

Fear? Curiosity? A painful dream?
The horse is an icon of patience as is
the small black dog, barely seen in the shadows.
What remnants of trees those are,

I’ll never know. Blown, broken, bare, skeletons.
They might be frightening in the dark,
but here, in the overcast daylight,
they struggle to mean anything except,

perhaps, that all things broken inevitably
passage into something entirely else.
The red saddle outlines itself in the way blood does,
as if it is flowing over the white horse’s back

and down its sides.
It is the afternoon before a storm. Tomorrow,
the young man will bury his older brother,
Phillip, who was thrown by a horse.