My poem, “For Horses No Longer Ridden,” that I wrote as part of my writing with horses classes at Heron Hills Equine is in the online literary journal “Quartet” January 2026! This journal is really cool because besides featuring the poem, each is accompanied by an poet’s statement about how poetry inspires them and what particularly prompted this work. You can read my poem and all the other wonderful ones by going to: http://quartetjournal.com.
This poem, for me, is an example of how something we really love creates art through us.
For Horses No Longer Ridden
Horses by nature were never meant
to be saddled, the slight swale
between withers and rump
not constructed for armor
or even summers of the young.
With age comes ease, never again
to be mastered by leather,
no longer made to carry
the weight of worry and journey.
I do not demand they create a gait for me.
Today three twenty-year-old horses
salvage the landscape. They graze
with muscles light as wings: sparrow,
blue bottle fly, afternoon’s angled light.
I bring a palm of apple slices.
I know they do not love me
the way I might wish for intimate
love, even as the supple lips
caress my open hand. And I do not
plot to harness them to furrow
the hard, unyielding fields
for the sake of my hunger.
Horses are their own loose army
of peace. I want to feel how stalks
grow soft within them. How their slow
feasting sets the whole Earth free.