Category: orchard

The mare roamed soft about the slope,
Her rump was like a dancing girl’s.
Gentle beneath the apple trees
She pulled the grass and shook the flies,
Her forelocks hung in tawny curls,
She had a woman’s limpid eyes,
A woman’s patient stare that grieves.
And when she moved among the trees,
The dappled trees, her look was shy,
She hid her nakedness in leaves.
A delicate though weighted dance
She stepped while flocks of finches flew
From tree to tree and shot the leaves
With songs of golden twittering;
How admirable her tender stance.
And then the apple trees were new,
And she was new, and we were new,
And in the barns the stallions stamped
And shook the hills with trumpeting.
~Ruth Stone, “The Orchard” from What Love Comes To

Only one retired Haflinger mare remains on our farm now, her small herd diminishing one at a time as they passed from old age. She now is thirty herself, living her remaining days with two geldings in their twenties.

Over four decades, we have kept over a dozen mares born on this land, where they served us well, birthing us their foals and working when asked. In their retirement, they deserved this easy life on pasture for as long as their legs and feet could carry them up and down the slopes of our hilly farm – they more and more resembled our ancient crooked crippled orchard trees, some of which have toppled in the winter winds..

We are close to the end of our horse-keeping days; hard decisions must be made at some point and I don’t feel quite prepared to determine when they are no longer enjoying their time under the sun and I am too frail to care for them as they deserve.

I don’t want them or me to topple over like an old hollow tree in the wind.

I listen for their nickers as I come into the barn each morning and gauge their eagerness to be set free to the fields. The other day, as the sky was gray with a passing rain shower, the geldings went outside happily. As I let our mare out to pasture, she stopped on her way through the gate and turned around, poised to head back to the barn rather than get wet.

I looked her in the eyes and understood exactly how she was feeling.

Perhaps I have identified a bit too much with the stiffness as my aging mares move, their need for frequent napping times in the field, swishing at flies while they dream of younger days of flirting with stallions, nursing babies, having suppler joints and the occasional wild gallop at twilight.

I sing a sad lullaby to myself as I work about the barn with slow deliberation, knowing there is a somber sorrow to life change.
The years pass, never to return, leaving those limpid eyes, flowing manes and tails in their wake.

Ah, yes,
I have had
all the pretty little horses…