Grace

Not divine, not rare, perhaps unexpected,
not unearned—
our brightest courage shone back at us.

She learned to trust by trusting this horse,
hurtling together over fences and walls

and when Rosie died, she found, when her own knees
refused to push her up from the barn floor,

hands, so many hands, reaching for her. Rosie’s friends,
people who paused at the pasture nearly every day,

people she had never suspected, stopping their cars to say
I’m sorry, she was so beautiful, we loved her.

Grief thrusts a rigid laundry basket of bricks
into our arms. Grace stretches stranger’s hands to pluck

some of them, to make bearable the crippling bulk.
Old wives tell the truest tales—a shared load is lighter.

So light it can come to shine out
nearly as bright as spring sunshine

across a chestnut mare’s back.