Alan Birkelbach: New and Selected Poems

Tommy, The Man Who Broke Horses

-15Tommy , The Man Who Broke Horses, would talk about being all off the Earth, his toes and the horse’s hooves pointing down, and he’d talk about the all-over getting quiet when a body’s not in contact with anything, all quiet except for that one sound that everything carries with itself, its true sound, the sound it makes when it is being just itself, that sound from down inside where the guts live and churn. He’d say this and we’d say he was crazy. One sound? We’d laugh, and slap the dust from his shirt but it was a look-away type of laugh ’cause we’d all heard it, that sound, like thunder when it finally had intent, or like that red squeal of the cornered javelina, or like that shot-like strike of the rattlesnake coiled too tight. Tommy, the man who broke horses, would talk about the highest point of each buck, and we envied him being suspended up there, removed from all the squabble. -16We longed to hear it; we wanted to know what our sound was, to know if it was something deep and strong. So, after we’d quit laughing, from a ways off we’d squint at Tommy and envy his aches and pains, and we’d talk to ourselves, our mouths full of spit and yearning, hoping something would give us the courage to sit in that leaping saddle, to give us the chance to fly, to listen closely as we held on tight. ...