Earth Beneath Their Feet

I love my horses. I love their humor, their elegance, and their honesty.
They tell me directly when they are hungry, afraid, curious or disinterested.
They share their playfulness, their haughtiness and shyness.
They love me openly and disdain me with the same ease.

My horses sleep under the stars every night.
They know the lullaby of the crickets or the north wind with equal clarity.
They hear the coyotes howl at the moon
And the sound of a thousand blackbird wings is as common as their own breath.

They share their pasture with whatever the winds may bring.
In the fall it is the great, fluttering of the Monarch migration.
In the winter it is the sparkling drifts of snowy crystals
And in warm summer it is the alfalfa, the thistles and the millions of insects who dine upon them.

I watched my husband spread our sheep manure over the western field today.
It is a hard job made harder by watching the bones of dead sheep buried within fall away into the earth
So many lost this year – so much of it a heart wrenching mystery.
And now they drop back into the earth to feed the thistles, the hay and the millions of insects who dine upon them.

I am growing old with my horses and I wonder what will become of us.

I have watched my sheep pass gently out of life and hope that I will have the same grace as they.
I love my horses with every bone in my body and can only hope that one day when it is my turn to pass that I can put those loving bones to good use and be reborn into the ground.

I could be the tundra that they set their hooves upon.

I could manifest the earth that carries them through the stars and rolls into the wind to greet the playmates that grace the pasture with each season.

If when I die my soul could be put to work inside the earth that holds my horses and tends my sheep then my love would flare eternal.

I could be happy forever as the earth beneath their feet.