Practice Jumping, Mayfair Farm

How is it a form filled up only with light--
plunging through a spray of rainbows
refracted off leap-shattered shards of air--
acquires such bulk and heft and surge!

Perhaps the eye, seized instantly and held
by snout, eye, and gold-feathered mane,
cannot easily let go of these, so must
take in the rest by

tugging the eyes away
(with a force that imbues form with mass)
for quick forays on flank, rump, legs,
taut throat, rider--quick!

for every equine surface arrows
back to the mane and flaring nostrils.

If you can tear your eyes utterly off
horse and rider, eyes can graze
at leisure over autumn-tinged greenery,
the girl who watches, the house that doesn't,
docile grass...

The eye glozes over these until snagged again
by high-tossed snout and silent thunder
of this form that seems, in its
seizure of our eyes to plunge

from stillness
that cannot hold us.

Dean Blehert

Last Updated: October 6, 2002