Horse people

I bought an interesting book a few days ago, Horse people, Writers and Artists on the Horses They Love. When I got it home I pulled it open to a story called Angel Foot, a Double Portrait. Here are small excerpts from this fabulous writer Tess Gallagher..... I hope to someday put down words that live and breathe like this.

She was the gift of my uncle and my maternal grandfather, but she had been hand-raised for me by my uncle Porter. " Your filly is born," he wrote. " I have named her Angel Foot for the white on her hind foot where God must have held onto her when he dipped her into black "........
Why not recall Joan of Arc as remembered by Guy de Laval in a letter to his mother: "armed all in white, except her head, with a little ax in her hand, on a great black charger," and further, how the horse , with divine discretion, no doubt, would not let her mount until she led it to the cross......
And even now she would know me if I came to the edge of her field and called to her. She would gravely swing her swoon of a neck round to to fix me in her world-glossed sight. Then, her tail lifted and spread, she would jigsaw over to me as if she won me at some lottery of expendable humans, hiding all the while her tender eagerness for reunion by walking the velvet cathedral of her beautiful black head to me the last few angel steps.

This story will transport you to a magical place as the writing is wonderfully lyrical and lofty and carries you dreamily along. I haven't read the whole book yet, but something tells me " Angel Foot" will remain my favorite. It is nice to know there are others out there who feel as strongly, and deeply about their horses, as I {and I'm sure you} do, and can put it so eloquently into words for us to enjoy.
{Artwork is from the book }

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