<table background="http://www.fischerpassmoredesign.com/images/marble.jpeg" width=750 border=0 cellpadding=25>
<tr><td>
[center]<table background="http://www.fischerpassmoredesign.com/images/tinceiling.jpeg" cellpadding=25 border=3 bordercolor=black>
<tr><td>
[center]<table bgcolor=white width=500 cellpadding=40 border=3 bordercolor=black>
<tr><td>
Riderless Horses
"Why do we mourn? He lived to eighty-two!"
Soc Glasrud said, tears coursing down his face,
a weathered headland where the decades drew
furrows that death will all too soon erase.
My father’s youthful face was disarranged
when a rogue draft horse kicked him in the head.
By words, not blows, we later were estranged
but I forgive a man now four years dead
whose last confession was "I’ve been too dark,"
whose final, whispered insight was "Vince wins."
Lord may his knack for words that hit the mark
win him remission of his venial sins.
And when I bear Soc Glasrud to his hearse?
More boots to fill or stirrup in reverse.
</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></td></tr>
<tr><td>
<table background="http://www.fischerpassmoredesign.com/images/frost3.jpeg" cellpadding=25 border=3 border>
<tr><td>
[center]<table bgcolor=white cellpadding=25 border=0><tr><td>
Stanza one is a little four-line play about mourning done by a strong man. Stanzas two and three--full of ambivalence that won't quit--meditates on a son's relationship with the lost father being mourned, and concludes by forgiving, which is not the same as forgetting, the "words, not blows" that "hit the mark," whatever their mark. The prayer with which stanza three ends is all the more remarkable, generous and worthy for the clearly vivid and still-painful memory behind it.
The closing couplet--unexpected and quite perfect in retrospect--returns to the father's mourning friend in stanza one, and looks ahead, sadly but resolutely, to the future mourning ahead for this son, who imagines the next loss: that of the surrogate father as well as the blood father. The imagery is spare and apt, the language simple and controlled, and the effect devastating. Amazing poem, for how much ground it covers in so few lines.
Should there be commas in line 9, after "confession was," and in line 11, after "Lord"?
~Rhina
</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>
</td></tr>
</table>