Gallop Poem by Robert Wrigley

The yellow pines thrash their manes
and rear. You can almost hear
beneath their stationary hooves
the billion root-hairs clench and click,
the nicker and neigh, the nowhere wind
goes by on the way to nowhere else,
bringing joy and hysteria to the trees.
In the interludes between gusts
they shuffle and sway then stand
almost immobile in the downpour
of shed needles—at last only a single
branch bobbing like a twitched flank,
then stillness, the sound of what was
fading in the east, the sound of what's coming
coming nearer from the west. They grow
restive. They wait until it comes
and gallop in their stillness again.