Poetry / Ruth Williams
:: Tame/Wild ::
The woman with the wild mustangs buys them at auction, some as low as $1 if you'll take them, tame them or not, just take them from BLM land to a place other than where they’ve always been. In her stalls, the horses still, they took a saddle, what the woman calls gentling, no need for that older, darker word. Intelligent creatures, horses learn the pressure of a leg means go this way, that. When we brush them, the dirt from their backs coats our pants and hands as we work the knots in their hair, pulling hard with the comb. Still, shifting, they avoid our feet. In the fields, the untamed ones cluster. Wild creatures, they’re black, brown, dotted, turn at our approach like one head bending, sinuous, elemental. They know we’ve got food, chalky man-made rocks they’ll velvet lip from a hand, move quickly off. When does a wild thing pass to tame? When a woman looks at the horizon, we say she’s gone far off, but we know she won’t bolt if we come closer. These horses have long eyelashes like women, so it’s easy to believe they’re sad. When we turn back, the wild ones follow at a distance, then flood around us, Are they wild now or tame? Some will never take a saddle, others do and will. The horse woman names the ones she’ll try to gentle next. I don’t know how she tells the difference. Is it the tension in a back, the way the dust rises when they run? These wild horses know the feel of the earth by hoof. Soft ground means first light; hard dirt, sun, no water. Could wet mean mother? I’m far off now. Their language gentles. Heartbroken, I can’t say anything.
From the writer
:: Account ::
These poems are part of an on-going, sporadic series I’ve written for years now. It’s not something I’m actively working on, but rather a device I keep coming back to for its generative prosperities. Each poem bears a title with a slash that I think of as a “hinge” that swings between the two words or phrases on either side. In writing these poems, I run along this hinge, swinging back and forth, exploring the pleasures and pain of being in-between.
Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press) and two chapbooks, Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press) and Nursewifery (Jacar Press). Currently she is a a Associate Professor of English at William Jewell College.