Horses in Winter
Lynette Reini-Grandell
Even now,
the cold front extends
its bear-like paw from Canada.
In its grasp
sounds splinter the clear blue air,
a frigid jet crackles above.
Horses stand in the weak mid-January sun,
one already shedding the hairs of a winter coat
as if he knows the sun’s distant path towards spring.
I want to believe his russet brown hairs.
Horses do not slam their heads against desires,
they live in all forms of weather,
with hooves that cup the ice,
in clouds of foggy breath;
ice chunks cling to their muzzle hairs
and snow makes stiff blankets across their backs.
All this season I have contracted
like a moist ball of snow in someone else’s mitten.
Yet this horse’s winter coat pulls away,
a few hairs at a time
in my bare, cold palm.
the cold front extends
its bear-like paw from Canada.
In its grasp
sounds splinter the clear blue air,
a frigid jet crackles above.
Horses stand in the weak mid-January sun,
one already shedding the hairs of a winter coat
as if he knows the sun’s distant path towards spring.
I want to believe his russet brown hairs.
Horses do not slam their heads against desires,
they live in all forms of weather,
with hooves that cup the ice,
in clouds of foggy breath;
ice chunks cling to their muzzle hairs
and snow makes stiff blankets across their backs.
All this season I have contracted
like a moist ball of snow in someone else’s mitten.
Yet this horse’s winter coat pulls away,
a few hairs at a time
in my bare, cold palm.
Listen to Lynette read the poem here:
Working notes
I was a horse-crazy kid and now have two horses who often inspire my poetry. They pull me out of myself and ground me in a larger landscape. This particular poem portrays the coldest part of a Minnesota winter, where wind chill temperatures can be as much as 30 below zero. One might expect horses to keep their thick winter coats until late February or March, but ours seem to start shedding a few hairs in mid to late January, signaling the season has already begun to shift. As a woman who says yes to too many people, losing track of my own feelings in the process, the change is a small reminder that metaphoric winters will also eventually pass.
About the author
Lynette Reini-Grandell is a Pushcart-nominated writer based in Minneapolis whose work has appeared in It’s Animal but Merciful, MNArtists.org, Poetry Motel, The River Muse, and Evergreen Chronicles. Her poetry is part of an art installation in room 5D of the Carleton Arms Hotel in Manhattan. In Minneapolis, she performs regularly with the Bosso Poetry Company, a subsidiary of Bosso Enterprises, theoretically based in Big Lever, Wyoming.