Gentling Bucky

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

The work early this morning is the continuing effort to gentle down the Buckskin, the beautiful plump mare that belongs to my son. We run her at first clockwise in the pen and then counterclockwise, the footfall of her lope muted by the damp sand.
There's much to take into account on this morning both on the sidelines and in the pen -- the taste of stout coffee tamed with cream, the calls of birds and frogs at the nearby pond, the way the earth smells and the monte foliage looks just after heavy showers such as those that fell the day before. There is also the incredible musculature of Bucky, the grace of her orbits around the pen on soft earth, and the steamy power of her lungs, and legs, and haunches.
The morning takes measured turns around the quiet, solid center of this ranch and in the company of friends who on this particular morning work with me at my chores.
We work in the half shade near the tree line of the brush, the sun still low in the sky. There is an ease about the friendship between us. That we broke off the night before for a few hours of sleep was but a brief interruption in our conversations over the dinner we prepared at the hearth.
We talked into the night of love and literature and men and women and vermin. (Norway rats, not mice.) Our laughter spilled from the open windows of the house into an evening cooled by rain, and once we stepped out into the night to contemplate the stars, until the mosquitoes drove us back inside.
The morning sun bobs up from the horizon. Bucky begins to sweat. We stop the run in the pen and turn our backs to the mare. She comes to us and nuzzles and nudges us with the velvet of her nose. Where she rests her head on my shirt, she leaves patches of sweat tinged with dust and chlorophyll, her horse smell wafting up from the lather of her coat. Outside the tack room where we have tied Bucky to the hitching post, we brush her and bathe her and comb the tangles from her mane. Our brushes fill with the gold of the summer coat Bucky is shedding, and our hearts fill with something that is also golden.