The Chestnut Horses

It must be the chestnut horses
that keep this fallow
field on its uphill
slant –

their hooves planted
at four corners,
their manes long
as yellow grass.

And it must be
the horses that keep
time on its track,
so that when we flicker

across their unhurried
gaze, wade through bent
mist-flecked grass,
our pace

slows to theirs.
Halfway up or down
the steep hold
of the world,

it must be the chestnut
horses that keep it
fast, green by mere
faith.
 

Sundown, Winter

How long will the pink house stay pink?
When will the six panes of sky
lose their bluebottle wash?
When will the lights go on,
one by one, in the house
I carry wherever I go?
One for the kitchen
where the soup-pot steams.
One for my daughters
bent over their homework.
One for the cat as he licks his dish.
One for my husband as he stokes the fire.
One for myself, emptying the coal bin
into the humming stove.
One for my father who comes no more.
One for my mother, my sister, my little niece.
Each light, in this house or another,
will lead us home, tonight
and all the nights to come . . .

Nina Bogin writes of her second collection that she has ‘drawn together poems that deal with the personal – family, friendship, love and loss; poems about landscape and place; and poems that try to come to grips with the larger world and its chaos. Uniting the poems is a common thread: the natural world and its impenetrable presence which, though threatened, remains a source of renewal and, therefore, of faith.’