The Vow

For all the horses I will know someday in the future

THE VOW
August 23, 2006

For all the horses yet to be;
the ones I don’t know now,
but will be in my life some day,
some time, some way, somehow:

I turn my heart towards you
because the horses that I’ve known
are either dead or otherwise gone
or, in time, will be out-grown.

Because nothing fit can last
there’s always what’s ahead.
So I take my eyes off what has been
and look ahead, instead.

For you horses in your paddocks
tossing buckskin heads with sun-baked manes,
which I will one day run a comb through
and teach your will through trembling reins;

all those whose paths will meet
with mine someday I send my love
and pray Godspeed to both of us
with His blessings from above.

To keep on living in the past
or laying too much store on ‘now’
is a self-destructive practice
so to those to come I make this humble vow.