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CHILDHOOD, HORSES, RAIN Again rain: and the world like a fish held under running water while the knife-blade smooths the skin of scales. Its twin eyes open, watching not-death, not-life. We shed our wild selves like this, fearlessly, as water sheds its smoothness under wind, and the image breaks, the white house, the apple trees, the horses quivering with late summer flies as they graze, the hundred wings brushing the lake of their backs. Or the dog, who, seeing I will not open the door, lies down at last to sleep: how, in her dream, she chases down birds and barks softly. How later the door will open, and she in all her black and white ecstasy will burst through to the scent of damp earth, return shaking rain from her like seeds to the kitchen floor. It is late and the dishes are finished, put away. I towel her dry, she offers her feet up easily, as a horse from long practice eases the farrier's work: stands patiently at the hiss of hot iron dipped briefly into a pail, cooled now and shaped to this one curve of hoof, pared not quite to the quick; and the swift blows with their stopped-bell ring. As we learn to stand, for this world. 68 ...

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