The Day We Decided to Put Fawn Down

 

From Coyote Bush

By Peter Nash

My friend David and I stand outside the fence

watching the horses eat hay,

water dripping off the two mares,

bay trees bowing in the wind.

I wonder if a protein pot

will add flesh to Fawn,

the elderly mare whose rough spotted hide

hangs on a coatrack of bone,

wonder whether to trim her hooves

or order some Butazolidin

from the vet for her swollen fetlock.

 

Rain prickles our blue plastic hoods,

the great muscled jaws chew.

Fawn eases her leg

staring at us with milky eyes

like pockmarked marble.

More talk back and forth of rain,

vets, horses, a troubled neighbor,

windfall apples. Then quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It is a pleasure to announce that our judge, Carl

Dennis, has chosen Coyote Bush by Peter Nash as

the winner of the 2011 Off The Grid Press prize

for poets over sixty. It is now available to

purchase.

 

We thank everyone who helped make this book possible.

 

Coyote Bush is a book that pays homage to the earth.  Nash praises stars and their constellations, clouds and the wind and on earth, the horses, cows, deer, and dogs, who blessedly live without language.  In these poems of place, Nash traces and retraces his time-worm paths into the hills of Northern California.  He is content at times just to watch the light change or lie down in the hollow a pregnant doe has made the night before.  These are poems of refuge but also of the discovery -- Nash finds his place among the elements, firmly rooted between earth and sky. 

 *All contestants will receive an announcement and book order form in the mail.