Tugging the Arrow Out by Carl Phillips

Tugging the Arrow Out

There’s a nudging that a living horse

will sometimes extend towards a dead one,

          a nudging not so much against death – what is

knowable to a horse, but not understandable –

but against that space right before loneliness

          settles in for real that horses

do, it seems, understand. 

And so that was the first day. 

          The night was what night always is:

a black starfish, black according to some

for holiness, to others for the limbs themselves,

          unfurling as if from long sleep or a late stiffness,

or as when a quiet thing, and very still, starts moving,

moves, one stiff black limb     

         at a time.