The long, gangly branches of the cottonwood hang bare, massive and twisting above the corral pen and the corner of the small pasture. After every hard wind, it strews some small sending of litter into the wake. Broken ends scatter in the sand inside the pen and in the fescue around the tree’s base. Along the tree line of the east pasture, more bare branches rise against the paleness of the sky above the ridge, naked as the tall maple in the corner of the field.

But here, right beside the long white gravel driveway, the Bradford Pear tree holds stubbornly to the last green of the season. Fringed with the dark red of autumn’s ending, its cluster of leaves holds thick enough that the horses still seek its shelter and hold to their spot as if tied there.

While the cold rain seeps down through the boughs and branches, the geldings stand together, heads lowered toward the southwest, their backs dark and shiny with what has filtered through the trees. The ground around them is wet, treacherous. Two months of dust has turned into a thin sheet of mud above the hard-packed ground. Hoof traces show the quick slides the pair made in its brief turnings before the tree.

They give little notice of me, holding to their place and pose as I walk in with the halters, squeeze between them and the fence. I hang the lead ropes around their necks to keep the ends out of the mess, pull up the nose loop and fasten the neckstraps. I lead them downhill at first and take the least-sloped route back up toward the gate. Looking back as I take down the last wire, I see two narrow lines of dry dirt beneath the pear tree, each about the length of a horse.

If in the course of our lives, we cannot keep the cold and rain from coming, we can at least stand for a while as a shelter of some sort for someone weaker or more worn by the storm. Deflecting what we can for as long as we can. And when we cannot be the shelter, we can share what space we have, side-to-side, heads bowed beneath the testing until we are led to a better resting.

H. Arnett

11/10/11