Invocation to the Muse

What the Horses See at Night

by Robin Robertson

When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars;
foxes stream from the earth;
a tawny owl
sweeps the long meadow.
In a slink of river-light,
the mink's face
is already slippery with yolk,
and the bay's
tiny islands are drops
of solder
under a drogue moon.
The sea's a heavy sleeper,
dreaming in and out with a catch
in each breath, and is not disturbed
by that plowt--the first
in a play of herring, a shoal
silvering open
the sheeted black skin of the sea.
Through the starting rain, the moon
skirrs across the sky dragging
torn shreds of cloud behind.
The fox's call is red
and ribboned
in the snow's white shadow.
The horses watch the sea climb
and climb and walk
towards them on the hill,
hear the vole
crying under the alder,
our children
breathing slowly in their beds.
__________________________________

Reflection

This poem brings to mind many of the most cherished memories in my vault of childhood.  Most notably, my mother's parents owned a cabin near Lake Tahoe where I first experienced the joy of sledding and the necessity of chains for icy roads.  I must have been four or five years of age at the time, and I spent at least half of the week we were there inflated by a case of hives.  It didn't matter though, the cold air was numbing as I drifted stealthily behind the cabin and beyond the neighbor's until the cabin could no longer be seen.  That was the year I decided that winter was my favorite season, an opinion that I've proudly carried into adulthood.

To the point, Robertson captures a love for nature through this composition that I can only hope to come close to in my own writing.  He writes about the life that thrives at night, beneath a "drogue moon" and the edge of an indifferent, "sheeted black" sea.  It serves as a reminder that, even when the sun descends for another day, the world doesn't stop rotating.  Life continues to go on as it always has, even while children, like the birds, are settled in their beds.