Two Ponies

Two ponies, with braided mane—at a pacing gait—
Dark one leading the blond, bolting
The yard, now vanished through the eastward gate.
Pulling empty children’s carriages.
Their hooves over the wet gravel are all my pleasure—
Against the barn, echoing into the treetops.
Might I’ve stopped them? Shouted?
No. Not fallen out, like a caretaker drunk all morning.
Listening to sunlights play across the canopies:
These lecture sadly, vulgarly.
I do wonder yielding to a “humiliated reason”
Seeing them go, where they might
Slow, slacken—without, I suppose, looking aside.
Then, stop. And where be.
On a dusty road? Toward a city, in refusing
A bridge? Or resting, beneath some pounding overpass.
Loos’d, free, furred. Browsing and waiting.
For what? That science, too, surely must fade.
I sing songs to the seas, my dears—”tears for things.”
Oh, Lord, have I cast love from me?