Stalking Horses

by Jeremy Marks

I send out at night
my stalking horses

They report to me
            at dawn
behind the firewood shed.

My children feel that I turn
into a four-legged, centaur-like man
while they are sleeping

That my eyes are seated behind
a pair of large globes
catching the sinuous, roving robe
of equine landscapes

But they do not-

The horses are their own;
they stalk for themselves
through many a darkness
I know not

And they are not mine-
we merely share this patch of Earth

I bought off a man
-as I bought them

And all of us were then turned loose
upon ourselves.