Harvest

We rode the fields into the woods
the path was moist and the grass
beginning to turn, all the green
will be blonde by October

There was a stench about the expanse of space
that smelled like harvest, like a warmth
beneath cool cotton

Strange thistle grow up
their spiny beauty stark
against meaty leaves

Forward with Salomeh, up
and down with the rise
of the forest before us

My body rocked and I remembered
my pubic bone pressed to the saddle
tail high

Her veins were like a web pulsing
under a tight coat that shined
when a faint light passed
through the heavy clouds

I traced her blood along her neck
and heaving chest, across her girdled
belly and watched it smooth over
her haunches

The memory came back with a scent
of a sweet decay, apples rotting
below their browning trees and the reins
fell in palms like dreaming

My feet shook in the stirrups till
I pressed hard, clamping my legs
around her, she felt me cling and took me

Knees to leather I hugged her, kept my head
down with hers and watched the fields
disappear from her warm mane

In the woods she scraped my calves and
shoulders on dry birch, I saw us reflected
in a studánka and she cantered home

But this smell has left me with a yearning
I cannot name, something musty and dark
and full with the need to create