War Horses Poem by Ron Wallace

Bukowski is inside-reading;
I leave him at my desk to wait
the dead of winter with whiskey and cigars,
and walk outside onto the cedar deck.
I carry leather, stone, steel and oak with me
into the elements
Dickey, Jeffers, Komunyakaa
and Howard Starks;
these are my war horses.
They bleed Whitman,
sometimes in fine arterial spray,
sometimes in droplets that spatter
in bright red splotches
and sometimes –
sometimes they seep, saturating the pages.
They speak of horses, hawks, yellow jackets
and mountain boomers,
Osage County, Buckhead and Bogalusa
and I listen for echoes in trees and rain
beyond the empty clink of beer bottles
where unfolding black steals the sunset,
and I lift worn western heels up
onto a low wrought iron table
to watch a changing sky
before reading the blood.