Horse returns from the dead,

from his sojourn to the Horsehead Nebula, shaking cosmic dust from his thick mane and appaloosa tail, and finds his earthy pasture has razed and, in its place, an attractive structure with sweeping views of the Sammamish Valley—only a short drive to the Willows Run Golf Complex and the Woodinville wine country. Is there a party, an anniversary, a rapture he needs to be aware of? Indeed, we rode to Ste. Michelle, before concrete and the bike path, stirred dust clouds in an attempt to outrun the other horses, the cyclists, the developers in their well-fed suits, shit-free shoes. To whom this may concern, we aired our griefs, sparred, were spared—or so we believed. A year or two of green pastures before moving on to wilder stables, down longer and more forested roads. Horse watches the dust settle, registers for a night on fresh straw, a trough of oats and first cutting hay. Horse serves notice to the cuff links and wide ties, tears up mouthfuls of manicured turf, paws his steel-toed hooves in deep, grooves into bedrock. What does the world of execs know about what Horse needs? Horse’s radiant, irradiated body throws off polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. He knows the different between fermenting history beneath mounds of road apples, and strangling it with rebar, cutting it off with machinery and chemicals. Horse calls on my guardian angel, cloaks me in protection before galloping back to his place in Orion B’s molecular cloud, his silicate mane sloughing dust, says, I’ll be waiting for you.