Mary Herbert

A Song for Astrid: William Carlos Williams's Horse World famous poet has a horse: Astrid is her name. A poetic horse, of course. She pulls his buggy to the hospital each day, while he plays the writing game, poetry. Clip clop to Passaic. He feels words in the reins: time to dream, time to write. Horsepower in quatrains. The mare's steady trot, the bounce of the buggy, give a rhythm to thought, Pound and prosody. Plums, oh plums, he hums (can you hear?) just to himself, and to the little mare's ear. Dancing naked, red wheelbarrows-- the name of a city, Paterson-- his words dance on her back, a mare named Astrid, jettisoned. He falls in love with a motor car, poor Astrid loses her job, no more hauling a poet superstar. Driving to Passaic, chanting an ode, now he has to keep an eye on the road. Gunning the motor, singing a gasoline hymn, while the little mare fades and disappears. The poet-physician driving to Passaic, over the river and across the track-- parks his car and races in to mend the ill and kiss the nurses (poems in their purses). Ah, does he care? Her nose in grain, she waits in the empty stable, Astrid, the M.D.'s mare. Astrid knows the route like milk delivery nags. She has no need of the rein, while the poet sleeps or sings, or keeps at his writing and his dreaming-- Art!  Europe!  Flesh! and the busy schedule's cash. Will he miss his horse? Of course, of course. My revisionist history will bring her back. Life in Rutherford changes, he cannot keep her-- but he writes her name, Astrid-- I will him to have loved her. Early in the morning, he harnesses her, his mind on the hospital, and his new wife left behind. Staring at the mare's behind, he lets the rhythm of her gait force him to be calm, to wait until the hospital arrives, in time. He parks his horse, stables his car, words clutched in gifted hands-- he and Astrid stay the course. coda: Plums, he hums, into her velvet ear.

Copyright © 1999 Mary Herbert All Rights Reserved "A Song for Astrid," originally appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of Women and Language