After four hours on a horse
Padre says if the water’s too high
we’ll turn back,
and the small Indian village
will miss Communion again.
The river proves hard to read
so he sends me first
on the shorter horse.
Current foams my ankles,
then rises to our flanks
and saddle bags.
Hooves wobble on rock
and a shock of river
flashes up my jeans.
Suddenly we lift off bottom,
pistons blurring beneath me.
He snorts froth as his muzzle dips
and dips beneath the surface.
We swim toward peasants
waiting in a stone church
for what we bring,
waiting for what brought us:
release from the ground we know,
a ride through startling water
on the broad, slippery back
of an ordinary beast.
