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"Blessed"

Snip the 'Wonder Pony' was nearly forty years old. He was getting ready to die. It was a terribly tearful day. The sky was perfectly blue, there were small, puffy clouds, the grass was green and good. Jennifer Rudy, Amy Torbert and I took him to Homestead and had the vet euthanize him. He helped me give my first horseback riding lesson. He was one of the kindest and gentlest souls I ever knew.
At about the same time in my life, I was faced with some important life-changing decisions. This piece describes what I felt at the time of Snip's death.
As far as we're all concerned, Snip is still in that green pasture, running free and happy. This is for him.
June 16, 1997

This is the day I will remember.
The first time I was truly blessed.
The days when a captive heart touched mine,
And reached my arms up to the stars with it.

My days were alone, although spent with him.
I didn't know what to do with my life.
I had no direction and I was lost.
All along I had him there; and I didn't know it.

When he died... I started to live.
I cried and I screamed and I cried some more.
I held a blood spotted cloth to my forehead,
And I sang a perfect song.

Spreading in the green grass around him,
Under a crystal blue June sky,
There seemed a hopeful futility,
Rising, pushing through me and into me.

They say that life is born of death,
That spirit inhabits spirit,
Meshes and intertwines to start a great thing,
And on that day I started mine.

Day after day after that I changed,
I grew and took shape.
With his life inside mine I am newly alive;
That is the day I will always remember.
(~*