trout

The tack shed

Johanna Emeney

I go back to the tack shed on Sunnyside Road,
where once a happy dead mouse blurted out
of the molasses bottle like a bad joke
and landed soft on a mound of bran,
its punchline tail the last sticky string of the pour.

The hard dust floor, the rusty corrugated walls,
the grey smell of old straw all draw me
to the corner where the blacksmith would throw
sawn off hoof-ends for the dog. She’d gnaw on those
tough rubber woody remnants, then bury them for never.

I read the known-by-heart Braille nails on the wall.
They punctuate the dark comfortably: starkly unadorned now,
but still with the nameplates of all the good ghost ponies above,
whose luck is safely stowed in the upturned U of rusty shoes.