OLD HORSES

by Alan Britt

(Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word reason you already feel miles away.)
--Kabir

I wonder if I could swim, effortlessly, like Jack LaLanne,
the English Channel,
my happy teeth pulling tepid lovers in aluminum boats.

I wonder if there really is a devil, Lucifer dressed as headmaster
of a local elite all girls school
featuring an equestrian program
fueled by 24 and 25-year-old
horses donated by local thoroughbred farms.

Horses that slyly cut the corners of daily bureaucracy
with their arthritic hips
when the headmaster isn’t looking.

Horses which, oddly enough,
never became the horses of instruction, after all,
but instead pace their darkened stalls with a principal intellect,
no longer awaiting the equestrian god
to bless old horses.