The Milkman’s Horse
Jan 28 2017


The ruts, where we come and go.
The rise, between them,
like a gently rounded shrug.
Which overgrows, in summer,
greening-up 
with leggy grass, toothy weeds.
Wildflowers, succeeding each other
in brief seasons 
of subtle colour.

The handles, the doors,
where the power of touch
has dulled metal
burnished wood.

And the floors, where we retrace our steps
revealing their wear;
the Persian rug, threadbare
hardwood scuffed.

Even the drive, to and from home
the car seems to do on its own.
Like a milk-run nag
clomping through its route,
blinkered, sway-backed, brown of tooth
rooting in its feedbag.
While your mind wanders 
who-knows-where,
and the radio, unattended
plays on.

Because there is consolation 
in routine.
Even after we’re gone
the comfortable ruts we wore will be left
on our tiny patch of earth;
the trampled grass we cut across
the garden path we walked,
the furrows
habitually plowed.
Like graffiti artists, tagging our work
as if to proclaim we were here.

At least until rain
washes out the road,
its small opening
merges into forest.

Until new owners
renovate the house.
Or small animals
shelter in its ruin. 




I like the misdirection of the title. I suspect the average reader will have forgotten it once she starts making her way through the poem, and that it will come back with a start of recognition when she gets to the milk-run analogy. Although perhaps not so much misdirection. Because the poem really is about that milkman’s horse, since a life of comfortable routine isn’t that much different from the muscle memory of a milk-horse, head buried in its feedbag. 

I have my doubts, though, about the graffiti artist reference: it seems to come out of nowhere, and is then left dangling.

Otherwise, the poem offers a sobering corrective to our conceit of posterity. 

This poem began with another:  as usual, one that arrived in my in-box courtesy of Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. I only read the first few lines when I was taken with it and decided to try my hand at my own version. I hadn’t even gotten to the killer ending! So let’s call it an homage rather than derivative (or worse, plagiarized). And so, by way of homage, here it is:  


Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard 
by Kay Ryan 

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

“Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard” by Kay Ryan from The Niagra River. © Grove Press, 2005.