these horses understand the language of thunder

this wild liquid gallop tastes like tears dripping off their lips

like soured secret words from a letter to an former lover

thrown out and trampled into the mud by the hollowed ones

but who decides which retreating Arabians

anchor underneath the stable

against those pelted by the torn midnight salty sky?

if each steed would grow gills and swim across

the ocean to escape, or gamble in altitude

like the Pegasus of old – eons it seems

before these dispirited creatures with slit wings

where pulled down forever –

here they are begging for the fraternity of the brine

in circles, in panic of plight

once the prairie fills up and becomes a sea bed

foals will gravel within the sunken land

still heaving their noises above the water

until they give up and breathe in the drowned grasslands

and graze on the forest of kelp forgetting how the sinking clouds

betrayed them in the first place

— Chris Grasso