Читать книгу The Carrying - Ada Limón - Страница 20

AMERICAN PHAROAH

Despite the morning’s gray static of rain,

we drive to Churchill Downs at 6 a.m.,

eyes still swollen shut with sleep. I say,

Remember when I used to think everything

was getting better and better? Now I think

it’s just getting worse and worse. I know it’s not

what I’m supposed to say as we machine our

way through the silent seventy minutes on 64

over potholes still oozing from the winter’s

wreckage. I’m tired. I’ve had vertigo for five

months and on my first day home, he’s shaken

me awake to see this horse not even race, but

work. He gives me his jacket as we face

the deluge from car to the Twin Spire turnstiles,

and once deep in the fern-green grandstands I see

the crowd. A few hundred maybe, black umbrellas,

cameras, and notepads, wet-winged eager early birds

come to see this Kentucky-bred bay colt with his

chewed-off tail train to end the almost forty-year

American Triple Crown drought. A man next to us,

some horse racing bigwig, hisses a list of reasons

why this horse—his speed-heavy pedigree, muscle

and bone recovery, etcetera etcetera could never

win the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes.

Then the horse comes out, first just casually trotting

with his lead horse, and all at once, a brief break

in the storm, and he’s racing against no one

but himself and the official clockers, monstrously

fast and head down so we can see that faded star

flash on his forehead like this is real gladness.

As the horse eases up and all of us close our mouths

to swallow, the big-talking guy next to us folds his arms,

says what I want to say too: I take it all back.