Two Horses and a DogAuthor(s): James GalvinSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), pp. 129-130Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20153506 .

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Only up was gone. Up was away.

Earth still spun As it stalled and drifted darkward, Sublime,

An aspirin in a glass of water.

Two Horses and a Dog

Without external reference,

The world presents itself

In perfect clarity.

Wherewithal!, arrested moments,

The throes of d?mystification,

Morality as nothing more

Than humility and honesty, a salty measure.

Then it was a cold snap,

Weather turned lethal so it was easier

To feel affinity With lodgepole stands, rifted aspens, And grim, tenacious sage.

History accelerates till it misses the turns.

Wars are shorter now

Just to fit into it.

One day you know you are no longer young Because you've stopped loving your own despe You change life to loneliness in your mind

And, you know, you need to change it back.

Statistics show that

One in every five

Women

Is essential to my survival.

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My daughter asks how wide is lightning. That depends, but I don't know on what.

Probably the dimension of inner hugeness, As in a speck of dirt.

It was an honor to suffer humiliation and refusal.

Shame was an honor.

It was an honor to freeze your ass on horseback

In the year's first blizzard,

Looking for strays that never materialized.

It was an honor to break apart against this,

An honor to fail at well-being As the high peaks accepted the first snow?

A sigh of relief.

Time stands still

And we and things go whizzing past it,

Queasy and lonely,

Wearing dogtags with scripture on them.

More Like It

1. It's white ashes

That drift and mizzle,

Muffle and sift like snow.

Feather-ash, not snow.

Sure sign Heaven

Has burned to the ground again.

The pines

(Ah, Unanimous!)

Elect a new God.

130

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