I Would Ride a Cow Horse

David Taylor

December 24, 2023

(for Sandy Collier, horse trainer)

If I knew how to be a river,

I would ride a cow horse.

And we would be water and rock,

and would move 

with and without lead, 

intuition and intention as the same damned thing.

Guts and skin,

Hip and eye,

Reins and ass,

Brain and muscle,

Forelock and forethought,

Pulse and pastern,

would move like a stream,

together, separate, one.

And the cow would be the angle of land,

the gravity we work with,

driving us as we box it on one side 

until it flows to the other.

We’d eddy and turn.

We’d fall and pool.

We’d braid ourselves along fence sides

And turn, and turn, and turn.

And the three of us would be 

a river in a cow pen,

moving, moving, moving.

Water, rock, and what moves us.

Three and one.

The same damned thing.

David Taylor is an Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Environmental Humanities Track in the Sustainability Studies Program in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. His writing crosses disciplinary boundaries and genres—poetry, creative nonfiction, scholarship, and science writing; however, at the core of his work always is a concern for environmental sustainability and community. David is the author and editor of eight books.