another one whinnies softly as if to itself, instantly reminding me then in memory as well as nowhow I’ve loved the voice of horses for my entire life. It’s too late, I whisper to Whitney shaking my head. We got here too late. And Whitney whispers back, I know but next year we have to remember. And I whisper back at him, Yes we have to remember. Next year.
Toebowman always plays
Silent Night
last, maybe three or four times in a row, and everybody knows the words and sings it with him. And the seeming perfection of those simple sounds, with all the people huddled together warm out of the vast cold and safe somehow out of the vast dark, makes me feel as if the beauty that I didn’t then know the word for was nearly too big to hold all at once. And so for a moment I have to stop singing so I can swallow two or three times before I can make the song begin again.
I’m leaning against Elizabeth’s legs as she sets against Spencer sitting on a couple of haybales with Whitney leaning against his legs and against me, and Lonny on Spencer’s other side with Spencer’s arm around him and his other hand resting on Whitney’s shoulder, and Elizabeth’s arm around Spencer’s back and her other hand resting over my chest. And by the time we come to the Sleep-in-heavenly-peace line, her hand lifts off me and rises up and then settles back so that I can see her face again in my mind and even know thewater in her eyes slipping over her cheeks like quicksilver in the candlelight without having to turn and look up at her. And her hand goes off me again and then comes back, and I don’t have to look at it either because I know how it looks in my mind too just as I know her face.
And besides I can’t take my eyes off the candles, how wondrous a vision they are to me with their fragile light that for some reason makes me think of how aspen leaves tremble when the wind blows into them. And so perhaps if those leaves were to magically be transformed into something else, they’d become candlelight too because aspen leaves and candlelight both seem to tremble and quiver in just exactly the same way.
Sleep I think for all the massed days and clicking years of my tiny flickering life. Sleep I think of Spencer whose soul parties with the antelope smelling of sage and horselather and covered by the insubstantial globe of a great tumbleweed. Sleep I think of Elizabeth who glides over the sea with her long yellow hair trailing above the dim dark monument of the endless turning tide. Sleep I think of Lonny who bears his gentleness like a food to be offered to anyone who approaches him hungry for it or not.
And sleep I think to myself for all of us for all ofus beating fiercely against the wind or lying placidly beneath its cool touch with broken hands and wondrous wings and blinded eyes that see even beyond seeing the same wordless dream built of the same heartcrushing sorrow and the same unspeakable loveliness all at the same time how beautiful and sad it is all at the same time.
And sleep i think for all of us sleep i think at last
oh sleep in heavenly peace
sleep
HANDS
We’d been feeding the cattle off horse-drawn sleds, which is how it’d always been done in our country, Luke says. Big wooden platforms on runners with a two-by-four frame front and back to pile the haybales against, and each sled pulled by one of our two teams of Belgian drafthorses. Massive two-thousand-pound animals with thick winter coats and huge shaggy feet and a manner as gentle as their bodies were strong.
And Whitney and I would have to help before going to school. Spencer would get us up in the dark and half-asleep we’d dress against the cold and then meet him inthe barn where he and Red, our foreman, would already be graining the horses. And then one of us would go with one of them. One day I’d be with Spencer and Whitney with Red, and the next day we’d switch off, day after day after day.
But this was the morning after New Year’s and Red and
Toebowman always plays
Silent Night
last, maybe three or four times in a row, and everybody knows the words and sings it with him. And the seeming perfection of those simple sounds, with all the people huddled together warm out of the vast cold and safe somehow out of the vast dark, makes me feel as if the beauty that I didn’t then know the word for was nearly too big to hold all at once. And so for a moment I have to stop singing so I can swallow two or three times before I can make the song begin again.
I’m leaning against Elizabeth’s legs as she sets against Spencer sitting on a couple of haybales with Whitney leaning against his legs and against me, and Lonny on Spencer’s other side with Spencer’s arm around him and his other hand resting on Whitney’s shoulder, and Elizabeth’s arm around Spencer’s back and her other hand resting over my chest. And by the time we come to the Sleep-in-heavenly-peace line, her hand lifts off me and rises up and then settles back so that I can see her face again in my mind and even know thewater in her eyes slipping over her cheeks like quicksilver in the candlelight without having to turn and look up at her. And her hand goes off me again and then comes back, and I don’t have to look at it either because I know how it looks in my mind too just as I know her face.
And besides I can’t take my eyes off the candles, how wondrous a vision they are to me with their fragile light that for some reason makes me think of how aspen leaves tremble when the wind blows into them. And so perhaps if those leaves were to magically be transformed into something else, they’d become candlelight too because aspen leaves and candlelight both seem to tremble and quiver in just exactly the same way.
Sleep I think for all the massed days and clicking years of my tiny flickering life. Sleep I think of Spencer whose soul parties with the antelope smelling of sage and horselather and covered by the insubstantial globe of a great tumbleweed. Sleep I think of Elizabeth who glides over the sea with her long yellow hair trailing above the dim dark monument of the endless turning tide. Sleep I think of Lonny who bears his gentleness like a food to be offered to anyone who approaches him hungry for it or not.
And sleep I think to myself for all of us for all ofus beating fiercely against the wind or lying placidly beneath its cool touch with broken hands and wondrous wings and blinded eyes that see even beyond seeing the same wordless dream built of the same heartcrushing sorrow and the same unspeakable loveliness all at the same time how beautiful and sad it is all at the same time.
And sleep i think for all of us sleep i think at last
oh sleep in heavenly peace
sleep
HANDS
We’d been feeding the cattle off horse-drawn sleds, which is how it’d always been done in our country, Luke says. Big wooden platforms on runners with a two-by-four frame front and back to pile the haybales against, and each sled pulled by one of our two teams of Belgian drafthorses. Massive two-thousand-pound animals with thick winter coats and huge shaggy feet and a manner as gentle as their bodies were strong.
And Whitney and I would have to help before going to school. Spencer would get us up in the dark and half-asleep we’d dress against the cold and then meet him inthe barn where he and Red, our foreman, would already be graining the horses. And then one of us would go with one of them. One day I’d be with Spencer and Whitney with Red, and the next day we’d switch off, day after day after day.
But this was the morning after New Year’s and Red and
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