Knowing exactly what it needs to do, carrying its own particle of worry, or what passes for worry, the spider hurries across the floor, single-minded as a last, brave hoplite. Other mornings the starlings pick the lawn's seeds in practiced fours - one keeps watch while the others feed, always together. Even the potted tulip leans into itself unconflicted, canting its head like a listener to the room's brighter half. So to enter these things, sweet and mannerless. Hours now I have stared at that picture, that horse rushing over its gold field, its walnut-brown body patched with tin-gray, pure-white clouds. Red oaks form a ragged fence on the horizon and I can imagine how the field, the tough grass, are all the horse could ever want, free to the last of @3What next? Where now? Where is the long day taking me now?@1 Copyright © Rick Barot http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm @3Prairie Schooner@1 is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the campus-based literary journals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THIRD BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 18. THE CHARM by THOMAS CAMPION AVE ATQUE VALE; IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE MY LETTERS by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM ANNIVERSARIUM BAPTISMI (1) by JOSEPH BEAUMONT WHEN LOVE GROWS COLD by LUMAN R. BOWDISH TO EDWARD FITZGERALD by ROBERT BROWNING THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: MYSTERY by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |