The Muse Brings Me a Horse, by Jackie Langetieg

The Muse Brings Me a Horse

after Earth Healer, by  Carol Grigg (USA) contemporary 

The painting captures a woman 
riding a horse of lavender and sandstone
colors disappearing into each other
the way trees melt into fog.

A veil hides her face, shawl 
falling like water across the girth of her steady gelding.
His hind leg is raised, his thin muzzle searches out the wind. 
They cannot begin until a missing landscape  
appears on the canvas. A veil hides her fear 
of wanting what isn’t there.

Perhaps she is a poet, waiting for a muse;
the horse is her pen, poised, waiting for direction. 
They wait that way until she decides what is next.
Let’s say the woman and the horse are one—then 
so are the poet and the pen. She has only to tear aside her veil 
and the way will appear. 

But the artist has given her no hands. If the horse runs very fast, 
perhaps the wind will solve her predicament—either way, 
she will arrive—or not
while the ride keeps secrets of its own.

Jackie Langetieg

This poem was first published in Cup of Poems in 2003.

​Jackie Langetieg has published poems in literary magazines: Verse Wisconsin, The Ekphrastic Review, Bramble, Blue Heron Review. She’s won awards, such as WWA’s Jade Ring contest, Bards Chair, and Wisconsin Academy Poem of the Year. She is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. She has written five books of poems,  most recently, Letter to My Daughter. and a memoir, Filling the Cracks with Gold.