The rain falling too lightly to shape
an audible house, and audible tree,
blind, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.
He knows the field for exactly what it is:
his limitless mare, his beloved.
Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned
in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.
Slow rain streams from fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,
while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.
The muzzles almost touch.
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.
~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Lives of the Heart