What Carries Us

First, there was the horse.

Imagine creatures as majestic,

standing. All their lives they stand, withholding.

Imagine being tamed. Learning to be still,

to be speed. Imagine birds as large

as horses. We would be flying, grabbing

a majestic creature by its collar.

In cylinders of metal, we are four-legged

beast-lives of liminal spaces.

One time I was so tired of flying I wondered

if I will spend all my life packing then unpacking.

A complaint of privilege. We are such spending

creatures. And when I say we are beasts,

is that a metaphor? Metaphor, according to Papastergiadis,

is also transportation, between absence and presence,

“articulating action.” Its “very process,”

in times of extremity, is “akin to prophecy.”

I like the idea of transportation

as articulation, that the end of metaphor is a kind

of arrival, like getting off the train at an unknown stop.

So when I say we are beasts, perhaps what I mean

to do is remember that predators

have forward-facing eyes, and we do

grab others by the collar, and we do fly

in metal, in preparation for the kill.

What I want to do is slow down time.

Imagine love as a horse.

Think about us—a distance

apart only a flying thing could connect us—

standing and pacing, tamed and watching,

then finally with each other, laughing

as if to collapse, unbridled as wild horses.

In this era of brevity in this era of metal in this

era of abbreviation, yes, I’m trying to make you

think of me longer. Yes, this whole time,

the bird, the train, the whole thing

about metaphor, I said to say this,

that this is what carries us, the slow

consideration of what each other is, can be.

And first, there was the horse.