Having recently been declared the winner in a bout with Covid-19, I stepped onto my porch and was promptly hailed by my next-door neighbor. “Hey!” called out Karen Davis, her pruning shears in her hand. She was attending to her wealth of flowers, which include zinnias that she had convinced me to plant. As we chatted about the care and feeding of the plants, I glanced over my shoulder and saw two great horses at the intersection of the “hot corner,” the 4-way stop that speeding drivers routinely ignore. “Horsies!” I cried out to Karen, and we stepped into the street to greet them.
The horses and their riders were the living embodiment of the photo published in the September 6th issue of the Weekly View, atop the announcement of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s neighborhood policing initiative. “IMPD Mounted Patrol is used for law enforcement in crowd control, as well as ambassadors to the community.” A few years ago, when I lived on University Avenue near Arlington, I carried my two-year-old granddaughter outside to see a horse that had paused in the street, with a police officer astride. I did not take Myah too close to the animal, but I did want her to see it. I confess to a fear and fascination when it comes to horses. Horses are huge, and their teeth are also, huge. Also, their hooves, haunches, heads – the whole beast is big.
Monte was carrying officer J. Palumbo, and Lakota carted officer L. Schmitt. As I stood between Monte and Lakota, I could feel the impassive power of the animals. I stroked Monte’s jaw and remembered a song from my childhood. I sang to the horse, of course: “Eyes of blue or grey, may be true today … but for me the crown, are those eyes of brown.” Officer Palumbo’s partner noted my singing and Officer Schmitt said that Palumbo was retiring and needed a singer for his party. (I crafted a quick ditty, but I don’t think that I got the gig.)
My best friend’s daughter had a horse, and though Jessica has probably never topped 100 pounds in her life, I have memories of her astride her horse, guiding it through its paces. I remember being quietly astonished that a tiny person sitting on a great beast could control the movements of said beast. That astonishment notwithstanding, I am still afraid of horses. And still more, fascinated by them. I did a sculpture of a horse when I was an attendant in a psychiatric hospital. When I took the patients to occupational therapy, I would sling mud with them; a horse emerged from one pile of clay, and though I was unaware of it at the time, the horse is similar in appearance to the Crazy Horse sculpture in South Dakota.
My photos of that day show Karen’s quiet ease with the two horses, and my stiffly apprehensive attitude with them. But I managed to tamp down my terror long enough stroke Monte’s strong jaw, to note the flare of lashes from his eyelid, and to see him close that lid over a moist brown eye. I’ve written before of James Wright’s poem, “A Blessing,” where he recounts meeting two horses, who have “come gladly out of the willows/To welcome my friend and me.” As I stood with my hand on Monte’s jaw, I seemed to achieve a moment like Wright’s where I knew, “That if I stepped out of my body I would break/Into blossom.”
It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
cjon3acd@att.net
