After a Rainstorm

By Robert Wrigley b. 1951 Robert Wrigley

Because I have come to the fence at night,

the horses arrive also from their ancient stable.

They let me stroke their long faces, and I note

in the light of the now-merging moon

how they, a Morgan and a Quarter, have been

by shake-guttered raindrops

spotted around their rumps and thus made

Appaloosas, the ancestral horses of this place.

Maybe because it is night, they are nervous,

or maybe because they too sense

what they have become, they seem

to be waiting for me to say something

to whatever ancient spirits might still abide here,

that they might awaken from this strange dream,

in which there are fences and stables and a man

who doesn’t know a single word they understand.

Biography

Robert Wrigley was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. He was drafted in 1971, but was discharged as a conscientious objector. The first in his family to graduate from college, and the first male for generations to escape work in a coal mine, Wrigley earned his MFA from the University of Montana, where he studied with Madeline DeFrees, John Haines, and Richard Hugo.

Wrigley believes that poetry can influence the world and . . .

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