Old Paint

Old Paint Nov 19 2002

I attended the death of an old horse today

Quite unexpectedly.

I was walking out in autumn drizzle

And happened to see my neighbor

Squatting silently at the head of a prostrate horse.

She was silent, and I tried to read the situation from a distance

But her head was bowed

And her eyes were all for him

They were alone

So I let myself in.

The vet returned just then, from her car.

Paint was old past telling.

Forty something, which is really almost too old for a horse to die.

Paint seemed too old to die anyway;

Too old to register the barbiturate;

Fallen, but too old to realize he was motionless;

Long coat wet in the rain and already almost a part of the ground

His spirit evidently content with whatever small confine was left

As long as she was at his head.

And in spite of how absurdly inappropriate it may have been

The vet and my neighbor and I chatted cordially

Each one’s heart breaking 

As old Paint’s heart hammered away against the injection.

My neighbor had spent the night outside on the ground with the old horse

Because he had refused to consent to her leaving 

So she was when I saw her

Attached to his head

His ear and his eye

While we waited 

Quiet with amazement at the force of life

Feeble and dim 

And almost invincible.

Finally Old Paint huffed out his light

And my neighbor saw the end of her vigil

In a few minutes the tears began to come

There was no more reason to be constrained

Time for solitude now, even with the details that ensue.

I will see her again later

After she has had her time to water his grave 

With her memories

Squeeze us hard enough in the vise of life

And the love runs out our eyes and down our faces.

We do the best we know how

But in the end

We rue that it was not enough, 

Even though we know we did the best we could.

We rue it

And must relinquish our hearts to an order far beyond our knowing.