VSalisbury's soup

 All the horses have become enormously fat on the spring grass and so I have put them on a "starvation" diet in the smaller back pasture where they can get less of the thick clover that's making them look as if they're about to foal, their bellies are so round.  

Sonny is furious. Perhaps he's dissatisfied with his stature. He is a miniature horse after all. And it's clearly not an advantage when all your friends are much, much taller— 15' 3 hands or more. They're real horses. Whereas Sonny is real like the Skin Horse was real to the little boy. Through the magic of the nursery.

But back to the point. Sonny is pissed. Mostly I don't think it's his size that bothers him because although it keeps him at the bottom rung of the equine ladder, it also keeps him high on the human one. And he's often brushed and coddled and led about and generally made a big fuss of. 

But even this attention doesn't make him happy. He's just that kind of personality. A grouch.  I think we all sort of respect him more for it. If he was so, so cute and so, so sweet, it'd be too much. Saccharine.

Every night he comes up to me in the pasture as I head towards the barn to shut the chickens up for the night. And I say hello, and I lean down, and I give him a kiss on his furry pony nose. Just one kiss. He won't allow anymore. And then he looks dissatisfied and sometimes he tries to bite me on my thigh. And then he's off.

I'm dismissed for the more interesting blade of grass that's a few feet away.

POEM

I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing

by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

It is April and we're covered with a thick yellowy brown carpet. It is the pollen. The oaks are pollinating us. Zealously. It's falling out of the air, accumulating on the decking and over the chairs and the toy fire engine left in the front yard. It's tracking through the house. Everyone but Auddie and I are sneezing. We're immune to the stuff.  The pollen's blanket seems like just another kind of drapery in a state that loves all things gothic— hanging forms of nature. Moss, vines, tree limbs that drape to the ground. What hyperbole here. But I've said that before, haven't I? Anyway, it's quite beautiful as far as decaying verdant is beautiful.

I must have forgotten to get the eggs last night because, this evening, as I walked into the dusk to shut up the chickens, I came home with twice as many as usual, and I carried all these extra eggs and piled them high in the plastic cup I'd found to carry them home. Despite the fear of the gloaming, the fear of the dark, the feeling of the egg was always good in my hand. Such a perfect design. Thank you nature for making something so gorgeous in shape and—really in function. The delicate elegance of pure potential.

Tonight I had to go to the barn to give the pony his medicine and so I put on my husband's tall rubber boots (that fit me perfectly because my feet are so large) and I walked through the evening and the bugs were so loud as if it was already summer but it's only the very beginning of April.  And everything was soft and the hay smelt wonderful in the barn, and I could not see so I accidentally dumped the hay on the pony as I threw it over the stall.
And then I went to the medicine, pulled back the syringe and filled it with air, and I pushed the air into the bottle and then I withdrew 3/4 tsp of the ace  (which is yellow) and 3 grams of the white medicine (I cannot remember its name), and  then I went into the stall held the pony's forelock, pushed my forefinger between his lips and pushed the syringes into his mouth.
And as I walked back towards the lighted house, I winced as the boot bumped against my bruised shin (from where it hit the gate earlier today) and I knew again how borrowed this all was. The barn, the pony, the softness.