Run

She drops a match onto
the pile and then another
when it doesn’t catch.
Brown leaves and dry sticks
from the sycamores
all rearranging themselves
to better grab the light.

This land home
to the last wild horses
on the continent
and after three days time
we still have yet
to find them.

She sits on our hillside
eyes glued to the horizon
and the empty plain.
We wait right where
the forest ends
and opens up
with so much
space to run.

I tell her I know a racetrack
where the horses always show,
and she just scowls at me
before covering her face
with her sunhat.

She wants to see something truly free,
and I just want to triple what I’ve got.
After five days camping there
we only saw one horse,
a gray old stallion
biting grass a few hundred yards away
moving slow with little reason left
to run.