AGAINST THE CREAKING GATE Poem by Rutger Kopland

And so we stood against the creaking gate,
as out of this world as horses are.

Again it was earth, muck, soir de paris,
an evening of where and when.

Forgotten verses surfaced inside me,
faint pastures, gentle, rhyming with night

but you whispered: here, here it is
best, where you are now, where you are

with your hands. And so we lay pressed
to the earth and to each other, while the gate

creaked with the restive horses.