A couple of years ago your SRN editor wanted to design an all-purpose greeting card, and it happened that he had just acquired his first personal computer. You can see how hard he studied the exercise on his monitor, moving lines and colors around until it came out right. As at the left. The card even then was too late for Willie the milkwagon horse who finally took his last ninety degree turn, skyward, never to be seen again. But, Willie, this one's for you, wherever you are......................etch-a-sketch; kindness for Willie the milkwagon horse
The milk wagon horses of my childhood
didn't know it themselves
but their owners did:
the gas engine was about to retire them.
For years these faithful draft horses
delivered the milk from the dairy
to our doors every morning early
and knew their routes by heart.
Only the slightest movement of the reins
would affect their stopping and going.
Our town is laid out mostly in a street grid
of sharp right angle corners and
every intersection posed a straight ahead
or 90 degree left or right decision.
These old horses almost drove themselves
after years of neighborhood clip-clopping.
They stood and waited and shat in a canvas bag
while their bib-overalled drivers
put the iced, clinking glass bottles in the racks
and carried them to our milk chutes.
Brave children would put some grass
up to the docile beast's bit-laden mouth
or a windfall apple or pear
while the driver wasn't looking.
The horse on our route was Willie
and he was so beaten by his wearisome
same old-same old
that he would not acknowledge us at all.
And when he was retired at long last
and put out to pasture
Willie was such an old horse
He could learn no new tricks
I heard he moved around
among the cows and other animal fellows
In a series of 90 degree turns only,
ploddingly, no galloping for poor Willie!
But each day he was called in for dinner early
To give him time to negotiate to the feed trough,
90's by 90's, before the food was gone to the gullets
of his less habituated pasture-mates.
Small measures of kindness for Willie:
no gold watch
but a deferential dinner call, behavior-mod fame
and medical insurance against the glue factory.
[David Dix 1-26-01]
……………………………………
The milk wagon horses of my childhood
didn't know it themselves
but their owners did:
the gas engine was about to retire them.
For years these faithful draft horses
delivered the milk from the dairy
to our doors every morning early
and knew their routes by heart.
Only the slightest movement of the reins
would affect their stopping and going.
Our town is laid out mostly in a street grid
of sharp right angle corners and
every intersection posed a straight ahead
or 90 degree left or right decision.
These old horses almost drove themselves
after years of neighborhood clip-clopping.
They stood and waited and shat in a canvas bag
while their bib-overalled drivers
put the iced, clinking glass bottles in the racks
and carried them to our milk chutes.
Brave children would put some grass
up to the docile beast's bit-laden mouth
or a windfall apple or pear
while the driver wasn't looking.
The horse on our route was Willie
and he was so beaten by his wearisome
same old-same old
that he would not acknowledge us at all.
And when he was retired at long last
and put out to pasture
Willie was such an old horse
He could learn no new tricks
I heard he moved around
among the cows and other animal fellows
In a series of 90 degree turns only,
ploddingly, no galloping for poor Willie!
But each day he was called in for dinner early
To give him time to negotiate to the feed trough,
90's by 90's, before the food was gone to the gullets
of his less habituated pasture-mates.
Small measures of kindness for Willie:
no gold watch
but a deferential dinner call, behavior-mod fame
and medical insurance against the glue factory.
[David Dix 1-26-01]
……………………………………
