Palomino Summer

I drank and drank and drank
sunshine.

                I walked down
powder-dust ruts of an uncle's
dirt road and found that palomino.

Blond horse, quick as fragrance. Blond
summer, baking brown mud. Blond
grass, insane with grasshoppers.
Brown me in the the midst,

palomino's mane brushing my arms
in the rush of gallop. In the woods
next to the ranch, rattlesnakes

coiled, field mice inside them.
Pine trees leaned toward
the pasture I rode in.


hans ostrom 2019

Horse-Trail, High Sierra

Horse-Trail, High Sierra


Riding horses in the High Sierra, we take
trails threaded through hulking conifers,
bypass a Maidu/Washo ceremonial hill
covered with black gravel. Breezes off
Gold Lake wrangle scents of wildflowers,
thick aroma of skunk-cabbage, corn-lily,
and mountain misery. The horses snort
thin air. There's sign of bear.

Lightning felled a tree not long ago.
Now new thunder-clouds amass explosive,
creamy ambition over blue distant peaks,
east. Alpine meadows seem closer to
Paradise than most places, at least
in this easy summer's ride. The

sun-scalded cowgirl from Portola
leading the way shifts on the saddle
and hollers unsentimentally, "This
tree you're passing's over 300 years old."


Copyright 2009