Thunderstruck

The plight of wild horses, condensed.

Do you see the wild horses
*galloping
like the river
bends

between sagebrush,
rocks and trees,
free?
Standing

in blinding winds,
rigid
like mountains
between sheets

of rain,
biting each other
in the black velvet
of night?

Then, your reason
rained down
a *barrage
from behind.

Thunderstruck!

Do you see those wild horses
lying together,
their bones radiant
in the starlight?


25 lines
*galloping: a four beat gait that is a full out run for a horse
*barrage: continual gun fire

This is about America's wild and feral horses. The tremendous, unsustainable populations on both federal and Indian reservation lands are destroying the environment they live in and the horses themselves. In this poem, the third to the last stanza that begins with, "Then, your reason..." refers to the public opinion on what's going on with these horses, and that the outcome is the same regardless of what a community's (or the nation's) collective thoughts are; that reality is death of the wild horse. Emotions are just as deadly as bullets, in this poem.