HORSES

POETRY Joshua Kulseth

And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses

They spent the day breaking horses, My grandfather and his brother— his brother the natural with a broom handle, wielded with backwoods magic only slightly sinister. They’d finished the job in a single afternoon, walking beasts from the barn and climbing up posed for the picture posted years later beside grandchildren holding caught bass, snapping turtles—the brothers, my grandfather and great uncle, look brave in black and white, animals calm under their weight, nosing the air, curious maybe at their new condition.

Maybe death is like that, walking from the bounded dark, unaware of what you were only moments before: not your own, following after each other into some new greenness, led by powers only slightly sinister, from some final shelter into the sun,

posed and smiling.

They’re all dead, men and horses, greying to their end like the photograph, faster than our remembrance of them. The barn’s still here, and I remember when my grandfather took me to the place where they walked in reluctant horses and walked them out again. He would pause and smile as the sun caught him up and he entered some elsewhere, like he was all along in that moment with his brother, and didn’t belong here. Longing for home with his brother still as boys, he lives there now, finally, having walked from the barn, broken and renewed.