They were in the living room. Saying their <br />goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ears. <br />They'd been through a lot together, but now <br />they couldn't go another step. Besides, for him <br />there was someone else. Tears were falling <br />when a horse stepped out of the fog <br />into the front yard. Then another, and <br />another. She went outside and said, <br />'Where did you come from, you sweet horses?' <br />and moved in amongst them, weeping, <br />touching their flanks. The horses began <br />to graze in the front yard. <br />He made two calls: one call went straight <br />to he sheriff - 'someone's horses are out.' <br />But there was that other call, too. <br />Then he joined his wife in the front <br />yard, where they talked and murmured <br />to the horses together. (Whatever was <br />happening now was happening in another time.) <br />Horses cropped the grass in the yard <br />that night. A red emergency light <br />flashed as a sedan crept in out of fog. <br />Voices carried out of the fog. <br />At the end of that long night, <br />when they finally put their arms around <br />each other, their embrace was full of <br />passion and memory. Each recalled <br />the other's youth. Now something had ended, <br />something else rushing in to take its place. <br />Came the moment of leave-taking itself. <br />'Goodbye, go on,' she said. <br />And then pulling away. <br />Much later, <br />he remembered making a disastrous phone call. <br />One that had hung on and hung on, <br />a malediction. It's boiled down <br />to that. The rest of his life. <br />Malediction.<br /><br />Raymond Clevie Carver<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/late-night-with-fog-and-horses/
