ME AND WALLACE DOWN AT THE HORSE OPERA

ME AND WALLACE DOWN AT THE HORSE OPERA

Although we don’t together share
An ossified physis circumscribed by prairie-wastes,
I recognize what you’ve put there
In your looking book of wolf-willow tastes,

And, Mr. Stegner, though I’ve never met you
I also came up from the Horse Opera
(We both have myths charred in the dream flue)
And, like you, at my memory’s high-as-a-

Miserable-twitching-frozen-veined-nag-
Cutbanks, with aid of such deceptive instruments
(Frustrations, failures, embarrassments, disappointments)
I can’t see why we ever needed a backhoe to drag

The animal up the eyelevel embankment.
Knee-high gumboots did fit. Peril doesn’t.