Fly now, dear horse of mine

“A human being must comprehend what is said universally, arising from many sensations and being collected together into one through reasoning; and this is a recollection of those things which our soul once saw when it traveled in company with god and treated with contempt the things we now say are, and when it poked its head up into what really is.”
Plato, The Phaedrus

He left his horse by the road,
came through the double doors.
I could see swirling dust in his wake.
His boots were sleek black and
his holster was empty. At the stool
next to mine, he took off his hat, set
it on the bar. He asked for scotch. Swirled
it around the glass, looking for something
in the bottom. I don’t know what. I spoke.
You ain’t from around here.
He spoke:
I seen this whole goddamn town from above,
seen you drunk on whisky and seen the day
–fast approaching– when you were too slow
on the draw. What is in this glass of mine
ain’t what is. I seen this whole goddamn world
from above; I been drunker’n hell since,
but I need not drink, I need not eat, for I know
what is true and what ain’t. Your soul ain’t.
But mine. Well, that’s a different matter.
I done ran with the gods, climbed above the
earthly spheres, my throat gasping for air–
dumb as my soul remained; air is not real.
But like all who found out, I reckon, I had to
return to this lie of a place, where ain’t no
life but to seek love and beauty and wisdom
and wait to see them true as truth again.
And I have waited, but ain’t no waitin’
for me no longer. This
                    is the three-thousandth day.
He never did touch a drop in his glass
and he walked out the swinging doors
as he had come, but left his hat on the bar.

I found him at the same place a week from then,
drinking scotch like a man who is to hang, bare head,
his horse outside –two wretched stumps on his back
                           where no saddle could now rest.