One Poem by Mark L. Anderson

Children Discover an Electric Fence and the Direction of Time

The wire tongue of lightning
                        hisses listen to the children

growing up before it
                        in the brown-green muck

gazing in on the horses
                        and their held-in stampede

the electric voice speaks
                        lift this knowledge from my palm

like fruit, the language you’re made of
                        the music the universe sings

enclosing yearning in the muscles
                        of these mud covered mahogany

beasts galloping small
                        arcs back and forth

the children hesitant step
                        closer to the hypnotic buzz

entering into its note
                        ignoring the mother

her face a snapshot of shock
                        an expression ancient as the days

as the people who measure them
                        who chiseled horses like magic

onto rock walls rising out of rivers
                        where stones roll in the currents

eroding into tiny grains
                        of silt in an hour glass

turned over into the widening oceans
                        of the children’s eyes swelling

with the spirit of the first wild horse
                        the first to believe they could be ridden.