We used to talk, my daughter and I,
about nothing as I drove through neighborhoods
raised in worry, houses too big for their lots
set close to the road and close to one another
until the estate that never had to sell the paddock
the road was cut to skirt, where the bodies of horses
steamed in the morning. She’d track the strange
sight of them in silence, her mind only five years-
full of the world, as we rounded the property
too quickly – I’ll say it now – in my rush to leave her
with strangers for the day. I could practically hear,
if I’d thought to listen, her eyes’ saccades, the dark
distensions of her hair, desires complicating with the will
to walk the field, place a hand upon a horse’s neck and feel
its different life. I counted instead the minutes of sleep
any red light cost me between when I’d get back home
and when I’d wake to dress and eat and take my car
to the train that would deliver me to the night shift.
Even then, I wasted time on the morning news and poetry,
while others oversaw her growth in myth and calculus
and further forms of argument. Remember we were told
our lives could be transformed? The horses dared us both
to cross an impossible distance, so I failed to wonder,
even once, If a horse is measured in hands, how many
reveries made these? If my daughter was here now
she’d tell me, but my daughter is gone. I checked always
too briefly in at the office of delights, and now she’s gone.
Remember we were told: through work, through love?
Come evening, as the clouds set in, my daughter’s breathing
slowed, and I crowded a train with other heavy coats
and their tenuous bodies. All that time, the house sat back
imagined upon its acre, and my daughter’s imperfect
desires led her towards some new landscape. It’s only
now that I’ve begun to ask the meaningful questions
of the horses in their small preserve. Does she remember
those mornings at all? Can I survive their permanence?

Stephen Lackaye

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