If I saw you I’d run up to you and clutch your graying mane,
And smother you with kisses,
Exploding with joy,
At the familiar taste of dust.
I’d breath in your soft, musty, horsey scent,
And memorize the soft graceful way that you plod through the woods.
I’d bury my face in your strong, woolly neck,
Crying with sweet satisfaction as I watch your round flaring nostrils sniff around the dusty earth with gentle brown eyes as deep as your age
Watching me without looking
I’d moisten your fur with my tears.
and hang on desperately
Never letting go
Until that painful broken moment,
when I open my eyes,
and clutch myself trying to hold together my breaking body and the quivering disbelief that still refuses to accept reality after all of this time.
As I mourn my devastated, stunned
and wake up from a dream
in too much pain to cry.