Pure Enough To Drink Poem by Mark. A Heathcote

Blue-eyed horses —
a shutter freeze-framing the universe behind the lens,
shivering at a touch light as a falling willow leaf,
a slender horse fly riding the ripples down its creamy-flanked coat
like an observant nomad,
its bright, hare-quick eyes, not like every other old nag in the field.

It is the foamy white dressage of waves, belonging to neither land nor sea.
Every sea has two shores, two tides pulling in opposition — good and evil —
but here, a noble beast finds a stable in a storm.
It aligns itself with the lightning,
and considers itself enlightened,
a guardian of ancient understanding,
the kind you only get by bedding down on cinders,
bathing in effluent waters that were once crystal clear,
from a storm sewage overflow pipe on a pleasure beach.

It has ridden to the sunset from the coming sunrise,
searching for some long ago yesterday,
free-roaming the Rocky Mountain foothills,
or the Salt Wells Creek of Wyoming,
beneath wide open valleys to mountain peaks,
its genes splashed white with a frothing champagne,
under a ground blanket, within a breath's touch of billions of stars,
a map of the heavens folded into the sapphire of its eyes.

The meadow dances as time slows at its edges,
eagles soar, wolves cower — the hairs on its flank
rise moments before the lightning strikes.
And the forest opens up like a discarded horseshoe —
partially bulldozed for a mineral claim to further riches —
into nearby, contrasting sorrel and pine green pastures,
a winding river reflects a world slipping by the wayside —
the memory of one river pure enough to drink.