Riding the Big Bay Horse with Bindy

No need to be over the top. Want to be just right, but it never comes out that way when you write things down for some reason . . . oh well.

Wind off ocean lifting my hair up, whipping it back. I begin to organize my thoughts into strands of prayer, intercessory and supplicatory, and wonder, is this real?
Is there something real in my life? Something alive? Something Miraculous? I have to have that.
It could be today. If my mind if open. If I accept peace, and become unbound.
The Island slopes down green to cliffs. The ocean is a rich blue with white caps because of the wind.
"Dub" is my bay horse. Black legs and red brown. A shade deeper, more complicated with tones of gold, than my powers of expression. The wind lifts his mane as we Canter. He likes the sand arena. The footing is secure for a change. He won't slip, or bruise his soles on rocks. He stretches out. I want him to be confident. To gallop and let the wind fly through his black mane. For showing hunters, the protocol is to have a short pulled mane that can be braided, a shaved bridlepath. But I'll let his mane grow out. He needs it to keep the rain off his neck. And I need his hair to hang on to.

Bindy and I went riding this A.M. It was a long drive for her to come and meet me and I appreciate the fact that she came so far. Her hair is a cap of almost blond almost curls. Sometimes with her floppy hat she peeks up and her blue eyes look so innocent, I can't help laughing. She is a grandmother, but seems young to me.
When she was twelve her mother died. After that she imagined herself a cowboy, a competent roper, named "Gus". Now she has a son named Michael who is thirty-five and a pilot.
A couple of months ago, she bought my big black mare, Char. She tells me Char has a pen pal - another big black Percheron with a white star named Toby. This is funny.
I felt so exhilarated after hand-galloping Dub. The wind was whipping my hair up, and I was smiling without trying, like I'd just danced with the Prince.
Bindy rode Dub too. She preferred to just trot, but I know she felt the same elation, looking out at the dark blue white capped ocean through the streaming Eucalptus branches. The wind made a rustling sound in the leaves. It was lovely. A shady corridor.

After the ride we took Dub up the mowed pasture past the weanling filly. Her neck was like a swan. I would call her a chocolate color. Her mane was the best of all with rusty gold sunbleached ends. And then there was her pretty little blaze, and inquisitive nibbling muzzzle.

Up at the barn, we stood Dub on the concrete and I borrowed a paintbrush and put hoof hardener on his hooves while he ate part of a flake of Orchard Grass. Chewing, his hoof in my hands, he reminded me of Robert Mitchem, the way his hooded masculine eyes reposed, and he chewed, like he had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But it was only a piece of hay.