The Mare at the Gate

She stands at the gate most mornings, not because she wants to leave but because the gate is where things happen. Feed arrives here. People arrive here. Other horses pass on the track beyond.

It took me three weeks to stop reading this as impatience or confinement anxiety. She is not waiting for something. She is watching. The gate is her vantage point.

Today she let me stand beside her for twenty minutes without moving away. We watched the same stretch of hill in silence. I don't know what she saw. I suspect it was more than I did.