First Snow and Poetry

In the gusty sunshine and first snow of the season, the horses are wild. As I move through the pastures tending water, roundbales, fence (and and marvel in awestruck adoration at the raucous ballet whirling about me) they leap and twirl and fly, they threaten warfare with their mock rivals, they explode from the earth as if to burst from their bodies. Just as quick, when I call they race over and press their foreheads into my chest, as gentle in a moment as they had been ferocious.

Ronald Duncan's words, gifted by Matthew so many years ago, come to mind:

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy,
Or beauty without vanity?
Here, where grace is served with muscle
And strength by gentleness confined
He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.
There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.
There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.

~Ronald Duncan, "The Horse," 1954

(Thanks to my brother, Mac Lee, for shooting this picture in October's peaceful gloaming)