For The Love Of Horses, A Book of Poems by Renee Moomey

Pony Wall

          Pony Wall

For a little tyke everything seems bigger

Than it actually is.

People are taller, houses more spacious,

Distances hard to judge,

Even what I recall as the pony wall.

Grandpa didn't work with ponies

Just quarter horses

So maybe what I was seeing was yearlings

Either way, they looked small from where we sat.

One day, I sat with an adult,

An aunt, my mother, a horse trainer

I do not recall,

But what I do recall are the horses

All kinds of colors, more than I could count

Or maybe I did try to count them

While they were moving from one haypile

To the next.

I recall my muckboots, kicking and dangling

Over the cement edge.

It's a faint memory

Clouded on the edges,

Even the sounds are smudged out--

Be that because the memory is faint,

Or the words and sounds unimportant,

Or simply because language was of little importance

For a horse-loving toddler.

I was high above the "ponies,"

An aerial view I've never forgotten

Or experienced since.

The horses trotted in from the distance,

A hungry herd of uncountable numbers. . .

A privilege it must have been to sit there

Watching the setting sun's rays

Dance upon the backs of

Dozens of rambunctious munching ponies.

          For all the "ponies" just beyond my reach

For the love of the Quarter Horse, give them a vote. 

Comment the names of the Quarter Horses that have touched your soul, please include barn names and registered names.