Oats

by Stephen Tapscott

I stood by the dark barn and called
and called to her by name,
into the labyrinth of stalls
and webs and smells, where I could see
nothing in the bent light. And when she came
she came bowing to me

out of the darkness,
bending her neck through the half-gate
to test my purposes:
winter-rugged, high-eared, calm
and skeptical of gifts. Her breath
spread its fur across my palm

as I offered it, the ball of her nose
worked nimble as fingers: she picked
at the oats
I held out scrupulously,
as though they might be attached
to my skin in some secret human way

she couldn’t see. When they were gone,
as evenly as she’d come
she turned
and walked off into the barn
and left me watching. So I never learned
more than she’d offered:

whether she was sheltering
a coldwater foal, putting herself
between me and the breathing
fact, unused to the December air
and the strange hands and the mansmell
I carried; or whether an old fear

pulled her away; or whether
the barn was simply empty
and out of the wind, familiar
as I wasn’t, when the oats were finished.
It wasn’t nostalgia, nor mystery,
nor pity for a creaturely loss

I stood with
when she turned,
bending like a great fish,
and leaned back into the dark.
But it was distant and familiar:
the oakchaff sprinkled its sting

across my fingers and I recognized,
advancing, what I hadn’t guessed:
that we had come to this, here, this.