Horse Sense
A horse doesn’t care how much you know until he knows
how much you care. —Pat Parelli, Horse Trainer
Can’t argue with that. Mammals Creed we might say.
But I wonder about the lower creatures like sea urchins
with their sensitive spines. Can they tell if we care?
The kid in the movie The Hundred-Foot Journey
in the opening scene scoops the gonads of an alive one
straight to his mouth, and bliss blooms on his face.
Yet the spiky echinoderm never gets credit at the end
nor the nice disclaimer that no animals were harmed, etc.
Regarding our large mammal friend, the appreciated horse,
do you think all living things read the vibes around them?
I gush to my ZZ plant every morning,
Look at you! Look how beautiful you are!
and I mean it—not pandering for reciprocity. Plant lovers agree
my dear ZZ does green up to happy heart beams.
The old homeless woman in the CVS store who ordered me
to push her wheelchair to the supermarket next door:
I obeyed and smelled her stench, saw the grime
in her clumped gray hair, the Rx bottles in her fists.
Did she, like the horse, detect rays of care,
pick up my unspoken promise to pray for her (and I do)
every night and before meals?
I hope she gets a Hollywood ending.
Jean Biegun
Jean Biegun’s poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received two Pushcart nominations and has written two poetry collections, Hitchhikers to Eden and Edge Effects (2022 and 2024, Kelsay Books). Work has appeared in Ariel Chart, As It Ought to Be, Third Wednesday, The Scarred Tree: Poetry on Moral Injury, Ekstasis, Gyropscope Review, Unbroken, and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces: A Poetry Anthology (Amethyst Press). She is retired in California after a lifetime in the Midwest.