From without the Fence

Carleton Winston

Yes, I have loved them
And still love them.
Yet hesitating on the soft warm carpet
Within the formal hall,
My lips conceal the eagerness of going,
My toes move murderous in their shoes.

And I am like a colt,
Long held beside his mother's placid flank,
His belly over-filled
With too smooth bitten pasture grass.

When the mare turns
He hurtles through the narrow lane
To hillsides rank with bloom and poison weed
And brawny oak
Driving their hard and amorous roots
Through sandy soil.