Gary LeBel

A Picture

I pulled over, drawn either to its beauty or the inexpressible that stands before me on four iron shoes. Its field is a torrent of buttercups; the tall, glittering woods-line is adorned with new leaves the back-lighting sun hammers into emeralds; the sweet smell of young grass, moist and fresh, hangs on the slack wind. A lone appaloosa grazes there, its long russet mane shuffling down its neck, its proud, equine lineage twitching along its flanks.

I lean on the fence rail having come to it with nothing but a vague sense of loss, a bereavement for something as elemental as clear flowing water … of losing it irretrievably … and when the horse looks up casually from grazing, I know that it knows what we are losing, and what we’ve already lost…

newborn filly
wobbling thru the daisies,
is it you
who’ll one day raise the ante
sixteen hands above us?

---

About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage. 

---