How beautifully the child I carry on my back
teaches me to become a horse.
How quickly I learn to stay
between shafts, blinders, and whips,
bearing the plough
and the wagon loaded with hay,
or to break out of trot and run
till we’re flying through cold streams.
He who kicks my commands
know I am ten times his size
and that I am servant to small hands.
It is in mowed fields I move best,
watching the barn grow toward me,
the child quiet, his sleep piled like hay
on my back as we slip over the dark hill
and I carry the sun away.