I found you looking at the table that you’d left
the way it was the night before, the way you always do–
The empty Reposado bottle, the food-stained plates, the caballitos,
little horses, the four tequila glasses sticky with the pleasures of the residue,
Our talk of Hemingway who writes hard and clear about what hurts,
who you saw as a young boy in a big man’s suit,
who needed guns and booze to feel alive.
you liked the spareness of his prose but in his book about the fisherman,
you sided with the swordfish and the mute, unspoken sea.
I loathe bravery you said last night– the bravado and the posturing,
but cherish courage, which must come from the heart..
I always feared Achilles, but love dear Hector most of all,
the holder of babies as well as the breaker of horses,
and my heart goes out to boys, you said,
who have to harden up to make it in the world of men.
You looked as if you saw some stalking horse of memory, unbiddened
and unnamed, that leaned a now familiar weight against your side;
to tell you with the aftertaste of night,
how to quicken the alluvium and easy dregs
of all your hard, clear moments:
I am your horse to ride.
My horse to ride— a story you told again last night,
about a patient years ago, right out of All the Pretty Horses,
and The Crossing–books that you refused to read.
Rodeo broken bones, big leathery hands, the tight lipped
kind of man, who’d spit if he had nothing more to say.
He was coughing up blood and you had to tell him he was dying,
My horse to ride. he said.
No family when you asked for next of kin.
When he came to the hospital the final time,
he dropped the keys to his truck and trailer in your hand.
I told you All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing end
with both young cowboys weeping like Achilles,
who rubs ashes in his hair to mourn Patrocolus, then weeps again
with Priam, who kneels to kiss the hand that killed his son.
Achilles serves them both a meal and they sleep close by til morning.
You preferred those endless Sunday afternoons
when my uncles sang and played guitars and mandolins
at the long unbounded table, and even danced.
I remember how you smiled and nudged me with you elbow,
when my father and my uncle Frank took each other by the neck,
the way men in my family do, and kissed each other on the lips
and hugged each other close.