The Stoned Horse Gives His Advice
“It’s time.” said the Stoned Horse.
“I feel it too.”
“But where to?”
“Exactly the question. I don’t know, and I should know. I feel—”
“Yes? What do you feel?” The Stoned Horse became aware of a faint sulphur smell. (Do they sell firecrackers in there, he thought? Focus! he stamped his front hoof.)
“I’ve been dreaming of the clacking sounds of the train on the tracks, the moon steadfast alongside, and cherry blossoms massed like cumulus clouds around a statue of dusty old pilgrim—”
“That’s Central Park in May!”
“Oh…”
“So you do know the way, why the hesitation?”
“I don’t know the why—the meaning, what’s the purpose?”
“You sound like a goddamn capitalist!” he whinnied in impatience. “If your journey is free of discernible purpose, you’ve foiled the tedious overseers of narrative law and maximal profit and hurrah!
You dream of the waxing moon and cherry blossoms? Let that be your ‘purpose’ if you must, your orientation. Go to make a spring pilgrimage—that’s all. The most important thing you can do.” The Stoned Horse missed the Gunslinger and wished for his old STRUM STRUM to highlight the point.)
“But, we’re at war. Do we have really have time for tea parties in the park?”
“HAIL! The Lord is with Thee!”
“How can this be? What if I’m not enough—”
Here, the Stoned horse let out a neigh-NAY a kind of horse-scream obliterating language coming from the soles of his hooves vibrating along his skeleton ringing in his own skull
the sound of war, the battle cry, of charge, of hearts springing into flame
of beginning of believing in the impossible
the turning point the angel trumpet the angel Gabriel himself flooding the horses circuits he felt as though the sound was shaped like wings sprouting from his withers
HAIL
HAIL
HAIL
the sound flew along the wires into the West Concord payphone piercing the dreams of those who slept in a quarter mile radius (alas, he wasn’t close enough for anyone in Amarillo to hear which is a shame because there are a lot of people down there who understand horses)
when they woke some faintly remembered a stirring
of a possibility whose name was forgotten
but it felt something like a wild
hope.