Generic Horses

Almost always we are mutually startled, the deer
that rustle the brush just past a barricade
of tumbleweed wreath stands, and me, running
my loop around the dead. All deer are generic.

That does not dull the thrill of finding them near.
Three bound across a broad, manicured lawn
on campus, and I, second at a stop sign, glimpse
an old man’s face in the side mirror of the car ahead.
Rapt, he cannot believe his luck.

Driving down a highway, he would also point
out horses. Horses with a wire of fence
under chin, horses spot grazing, horses standing
more still than their shadows, wind-ruffed
in the grass.
How strange we all are, what
with our instinct for proportioning wonder.
How strange, in our half-domesticated joys.