Horses Into Ghosts

[the horses]

I wanted to ask how do I do this how do I keep doing this

how do I stop I once required the moon no once your voice

moved the moon for hours across the skylight and the stove

burned itself out and the stars followed suit eight hours passed

and the moon passed the glass filled instead with clouded day

with light and distance and both of us so tired my ear days later

still red and tender the hot phone I held going down again into

the cold house the one the baby squirrels came all that winter

into for warmth caught and taken in the box kept for nothing

but that to the barn and set down in the hay and fallen feed

the horses retired to other homes the barn where tack hung

in the shapes of backs necks mouths and brows as though

the horses had not gone but become instead invisible I had

never been happier disliked the intervals of silence and sun

I no longer own a barn a skylight full of the moon a house

that squirrels seek out we both still own the means but what

keeps happening is the moon the day and the moon again

and it wasn’t the horses turning into ghosts it wasn’t

–Leslie Harrison

A big fan of Harrison’s work, I have posted poems by her on this blog before: The Four Elements, The Day Beauty Divorced Meaning, and How I Became a Ghost. This one appeared on Zócalo Public Square, and is IMHO another clear knock out.