The black stallion runs onto the tracks
headlong into the train’s cycloptic light
attempting to break its horsepower.
He refuses to yield to gravity
touching his feet and grounding him
into mammal again:
sweat, hair, lungfuls of air,
refuses to slip his nose
through another hard halter.
His head and hind legs draw up.
He kicks the landscape
and the landscape flies away
in the blur of speed and motion,
the fight with the steel air
steering towards him.
The trees turn black
and all green goes away.
The ground is cut to wrinkles.
The stallion drops his long neck
and fumbles with his thick tongue.
He stumbles into shadow.
Once, a long time ago,
he was named Never.
Today, he tosses off that.
The clouds from the train’s smokestack
pummel the nimbus of the dark sky
and its wheels stampede flesh and bone.
Its cars are loaded with cattle
headed for the stockyards
far away in the west.
