A number of years ago I rode over the Continental Divide on horseback. Most of the horses were big sleek animals with calm demeanors - except for Legolas, a small white appaloosa who was nervously pacing. Great, I thought, I’m gonna get that one because I’m the smallest one in the group. I found out later that he was on probation - having made a spirited attempt on the last crossing to take his heavy-handed rider over a cliff. When I returned to tell the tale, my friend and poet Dorothy McFarland did me one better.
WATERSHED*
By Dorothy McFarland
for Ami
White Appaloosa
almost a ghost
the spotted pattern on the skin
invisible unless the hair is wet–
quick, not easy to ride
but he likes you
you have beautiful hands.
I think he must have channeled
the spirits of his ancestors
and their riders,
Utes,
for there on the ridgeline, at the cliff edge,
you saw the image of an ancient chief
eagle feathers braided in his hair
sitting a spotted horse–
and words without sounds
hung in the air:
you see, I told you
you would come back.
He chose to end his life, you thought,
here–
this cliff–
he leaped–
and in this moment
he gazes again
at the untracked West,
at what is on the other side.
You sit the white Appaloosa
you know him the way a good rider
knows a good horse
though the pattern of his skin
and the pathways of his soul
are invisible
like the pathways of your life
here
at this place
of vision.
* “To Live in this World: Poems” by Dorothy McFarland