My Nephew and His Wife by Jane Mayhall

Some riders when they've done
with them, throw their horses away.
Who galloped the grassy sward, brisk on
a summer's day, buckles and saddles quoting
castanets in the sun.

My nephew and his wife, stern lovers
of the equine, when their gallants died,
buried them gently in the front yard.
But other amatuer horse-trainers in Alabama
just cancelled their beau-cheval,

once they'd either broken their
spirit, or let expire. And (incidentally,
against the law) carted their sleek beauties
off to the dump. But my nephew
and his wife, crack riders

and young at heart, had a sense of
the morning light. And picked up their flickering
shovels. Like hooves clopping through
the dark, did their immortal,
solemn work.

From *Sleeping Late on Judgment Day*