February 17: What I Didn't Know Before

[February Feels Like]

was how horses simply give birth to other

horses. Not a baby by any means, not

a creature of liminal spaces, but already

a four-legged beast hellbent on walking,

scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way

to another horse and then suddenly there are

two horses, just like that. That's how I loved you.

You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying 

a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two

computers swinging it in unwieldily at your

side. I remember we broke into laughter 

when we saw each other. What was between

us wasn't a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed

over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.

---

Ada Limón, The Carrying (2018)

my favorite horse poem for the year of the fire horse.