I rode, once, a mare the color of new rust through fields of grapevines (oilve and malachite) spliced by ribbon-narrow roads of thick brown dust, beneath a sky hard-blue and white-sun bright...

Horizon to horizon, sharp grape leaves cast deep shadows on dusty grapes, blue and blood-red. The bronzed skinned workers smiled as we passed--I smiled, too, and the mare tossed her small head.

Estrellita!  Your red coat burnished by the sun; taunt as twisted copper wire; your bright, dark eye saw monsters at every turn--tense!  Leap and run like the West wind--O'heart!--warmly blowing by.

How many miles did you carry me, West wind?  Your diamond-hard hooves like hailstones on the earth; the heat of your body, the sweet-sour blend of sweat and warm hair, the ever shifting girth...

If I shut my eyes I can see once more between your trembling ears the world's bright rim--blue on shimmering green--where you boldly bore me through the fields until the day grew dim.

Are you still there, grazing the sweet Spanish land?  Snorting in fear at trash piled by the trail?  Rolling contentedly in patches of sand?  Inspecting the wire fence that ate mane and tail?

Sometimes when a small star burns red in the sky, purveying brightly the coming of night--the dream of your rhythm gleams in my eye and I wish I could mount you for one final flight.

Down through the sunset that washes the prow of the distant horizon with opalline spray; a small ship, through seas of dark grapes we'd plow, into the vast night and forever away...