Her Name is April
by Pasadena Adjacent
Name of Horses
When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun’s muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground – old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.
*[Difficulty withVimeo? TRY THIS]
Pasadena Adjacent 
Filmed at the Cobb estate in Altadena. Special thanks to Banjo52 who first introduced me to this poem. Hopefully April will know better.
and here’s a fun link to todays cowboy’s hispanic roots
The Editor
LikeLike
She is indeed a pretty pony. I remember this poem from B52 as well and I remember all the horses I once owned and that left (I was a Navy brat) and can’t bring myself to think about what happened to them. They simply live on in my memory, beautiful and mine.
*****
Our Editor Responds: I’m glad your memories are made beautiful. Whenever I think of you having lost your “lived life” photos I shiver like that old work horse.
LikeLike
Love that photo and the very pretty pony. But what is it about horses that make me so sad? Perhaps the poem sums it up.
*****
Our Editor Responds: The comment I left on Banjo’s blog relates
“It’s the names. When I had a horse, I kept it at a stable that ran an active rental string. Unlike our horses who were smothered with affection, protected from the elements, and beautifully named, these working horses went unrewarded. They had one syllable names like Red, Hoss, Buck and Pat. Their ending was worse. Painful, and without intervention.”
LikeLike
Beautiful horse and film.
Amazing that it is in Altadena.
I remember the poem from Banjo, too.
*****
Our Editor Responds: It’s end of summer dry. The California Buckwheat has turned red and the owner of the foals mother was taking her through some pretty hard paces. Stirring up a lot of dust. But it was backlit and the baby seemed ghost like running through it. I was struck between her innocence, her name and the reality of what happens to these expensive guests when they no longer perform.
LikeLike
Gorgeous
*****
Our Editor Responds: why are my responses longer then the comments?
LikeLike
Yes, the string horses — Dolly, Dolly, and Dolly.
*****
Our Editor Responds: the last horse I rhode was a piebald, one blue eyed Dolly. She wan’t string though.
LikeLike
love the poem and heat of pasadena pics. this hot month so
changes the environment here for what is good and wild. It’s a
sentimental month for nostalghia and shade in a
tiring work world
*****
Our Editor Responds: Your a bit of a poet Pat. In the past I was nostalgic for a past that wasn’t my own (kitche’) now I’m sentimental for a past that was.
LikeLike
Pandora and Brandy. We had Pandora until she was too old to ride, Brandy until I was. They both went to good homes. I don’t know about intervention, and, like PJ, I don’t want to know.
*****
Our Editor Responds: Didn’t we all love the name Brandy as kids? I understand completely about the intervention. Lucky you, your getting the editors “long story”
My biggest fear was that Nia would end up at a slaughter house or rental string. To save money while I was away at college, I put Nia in the pasture of Thompson’s stables (next to San Pasqual). Unfortunately, being an older horse and last in the pecking order, she was reduced to eating the tiny leaves left behind. The alfalfa crumbs mixed with the dirt. I would get a phone call while I was away at college telling me my horse had collicked. Drop everything, grab a blanket, and stay with her all night to make sure she didn’t twist a gut. We’d curl up together, lay down and sleep against the shavings pile. Sweet. The third time call (plus she rolled on top of me while I was asleep) I knew I’d have to find Nia another home. I had a lawyer draw up a contract – Barbara Blanco – she used to prosecute slum lords. She did it for free (lawyers have been good to us). Sold her (tack and all) for a buck. Said if the owner ever wanted to get rid of her, they had to sell her back to me for a buck with the notion that I would have her euthanized and spare her a colder ending (I’m not unlike that farmer). The first potential home I took her back from (oddly, I ran into that girl again decades later as we sat listening to U2 from outside the Rose Bowl) Weird. The second owner did call me in the late 80’s but they took responsibility finding her a home. I ran into them a few years back below the South Pasadena putting range. Still horse owners themselves, they kept in touch with the new owners – good owners. Nia was found dead in a pasture up in the Walker Ranch area – in the foothills of the San Gabriel where gold was first discovered. I was glad to know.
LikeLike
The fiery red foreground, the light, the dust, graceful and wild. I really don’t know anything about horses and now realize my ideas are romantic notions, like from the documentary Buck (horse whisperer’ Buck Brannaman) and the movie Seabiscuit. It is a hard heart indeed who is not elevated by sight of and contact with such an amazing and beautiful creature as the horse. Why do we think everyone thinks like oneself, and then so shattered to find out, again and again, that they don’t…
*****
Our Editor Responds: Your right about our personal beliefs when they butt up against a different reality. One example – the dog who sits alone, day after day, an occasional pet and kind word, but beyond that, nothing more then a guard dog….
When you give it some thought, that bullet in the field, is far kinder then a trip to the slaughter house.
LikeLike
That must be some estate.
*****
Our Editor Responds: It’s at the top of Lake. The entrance to the Mount Lowe trail.
LikeLike
Poem is sad but beautiful. How we treat our animals wordlessly speaks volumes about us. Overcrowded livestock lots/pens, sunless buildings, inhumane slaughter, a few reasons we went vegan. The light in your video is beautiful.
*****
Our Editor Responds: You have taken the high road. I’m at level two (99% vegetarian) we call pepperoni candy. And that came about because of watching the animal loaded boxcars cross between our studio to the slaughter house. Death happens downtown.
It was the golden hour coupled with the dust. Beautiful
LikeLike
Our Editor Responds:
Pro Horse Slaughter “Summit” Not Happy with Dr. Grandin.
http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/1490
LikeLike
Have you read Grandin’s autobiography about how she learned to build humane cattle slaughter and treatment chutes? I’m glad she isn’t involved with this egregious business enterprise. As if there isn’t enough animal cruelty in the world.
*****
Our Editor Responds: I have the book but haven’t read it yet. I’ve been having a FB conversation with a woman who is riding her horse cross country. She brought up the horse slaughter industry in terms of how horse meat is found to contain high levels of stress hormones. Later discussion led to how Temple Grandin’s theories for humane slaughter didn’t work with horses – here is part of the thread (warning – disturbing)
The difference between horse slaughter and cattle slaughter.
by Diana VerHoef Bodensteiner
While cattle slaughter is humane horse slaughter is not. Cattle are raised and handled in groups for their entire lives. They are processed through lanes and chutes on a regular basis to get fly tags, vaccinations, de-worming, weights taken. etc. In the chute their head and neck are restrained for a few seconds while the process is applied then they are released. They get used to standing in the chute and waiting. The lane to the kill box is very familiar to them. Since they are easily restrained and stand relatively still they are easily stunned on the first attempt. Most plants have a 97% or better stun on first shot with cattle. Humane standard for kill is 95% success on first shot.
Horses are trained from birth to be lead and to trust humans. They are flight animals who are scared easily, and panic when confined. To get them to go into scary places we lead them and talk to them getting them to trust and FOLLOW us. Being pushed from behind, through the lane to the kill box is very frightening to them. Electric prods are often used to shock them into going forward. This reinforces their fear and many are terrified by them time they reach the kill box. Horses are naturally head shy and with a long flexible neck, can’t be restrained like cattle. Because of this the captive bolt often misses it’s mark on the first try. Then you have a horse in extreme pain due to a hole in it’s skull. He is in terror as the captive bolt is brought towards his head again, so he fights even harder. If he is lucky one of the next few attempts will hit the target making him brain dead. if he is not so lucky he will eventually collapse in agony and the stunner will dump him out still conscious to be strung up and have his throat slit. In horse plants the worker who slits the throat often wears chest protector and helmet because it is not uncommon to have the horse come to and start thrashing wildly. Historically US horse plants struggled to reach 90% stun on the first shot. The state-of-the-art plant in Canada is getting no better results and often much worse.
Yes, we eat meat in this country, but we don’t torture animals in the process.
LikeLike
I guess I need a good cry. Can’t bear it. Can not stand it.
*****
Our Editor Responds: It’s the heat and my bum foot. Makes me crabby and morose and misery loves company
LikeLike
This is very picturesque, what a sweet young horse. I admire Temple very much and have read her books. She has things to say about the cruel way in which some horses are broken in.
*****
Our Editor Responds: The high head carriage makes me think she’s an Andalusian. Mexican owned horses by and large seem to possess that high head carriage. Too high to be a quarter horse, to big to be an Arabian.
re: Horse slaughter – and a republican shall lead them. Repungent.
LikeLike
Beautiful pony ~ the poem made me sad. I’m not good at the reality behind such things.
*****
Our Editor Responds: It is sad. At least it started out that way – until I entered an even darker tale of horse slaughter via Temple Grandin, The Bureau of Land Management, State Representative profiteers, abysmal kill rates, wild horses and my favorite movie “The Misfits” sometimes I feel a bit like Marilyn Monroe screaming into the wind
LikeLike
Amazing light in the photo, and a really cool video. I’ve been away from blog world for awhile, and it’s great to come back and find a few people remembering and appreciating the Donald Hall poem. I don’t often connect with him, and I have only a little horse history in my life; but that poem has blown me away since my first reading, back in the 1980s, I think. Thanks for the footnote, not to mention the excellent scenes. Maybe I’ll be back later with a full battery–I haven’t read the longer comments yet.
*****
Our Editor Responds: Warning on those long comments….talking to my sister this morning and she brought up the blog. She inherited the “happy gene” and was disturbed by my poem selection; so disturbed that when she saw the pony being rounded up she feared the ending and quit watching. I couldn’t stop laughing.
LikeLike
thanks for sharing this beautiful poem, PA, oddly enought I happen to be reading Donald Hall’s “Without” about Jane K. at the moment and see from your post that I may have to give his poetry another look
*****
Our Editor Responds: Of all the authors in the universe we would be on the same page (so to speak) kind of chilling in itself
LikeLike
A very beautiful and very poignant post.
I was here a few days ago but couldn’t get the video to work. The photos really stuck in my mind though. Photos, video and poem really work together as a whole.
Applause.
*****
Our Editor Responds: Isn’t she a beauty running in and out of the golden light? I take a bow to your applause.
LikeLike
I never owned a horse but went horseback riding alot in my teens and 20s. There’s something magnificent and mysterious about horses. The poem gave me the chills.
*****
Our Editor Responds: My sister read the poem first then wouldn’t watch the video because she thought they were going to shoot the pony.
LikeLike
This is lovely. The light is amazing! How do you always manage to capture things at just the right time? The topic of naming definitely twists my heart. It’s like those of us who would treat them as family members feel that they are worthy of the extra syllables. Also, I’ve been to quite a few autism conferences and have seen Temple Grandin speak. She is amazing. I started but couldn’t finish the article about the slaughter debate. Definitely too disturbing for me. Apparently, I am a bit like your sister! (SO funny that she thought you’d finishe with the horse getting shot!)
******
Our Editor Responds: Thank you. I tend to hike about during the golden hour. If I’m early enough I can catch some nice shots before the shadows take over. Falls the best time.
Sometimes I think I’m exposed to more bad news through the internet then I was when I got my news through papers and television. And I too think it’s hilarious that my sister thought I was capable of posting a snuff film. That was a full throttle belly laugh for both of us. She knows me too well.
LikeLike
I probably shouldn’t be laughing at your comments about your sister, but I’m smiling. On the other hand, I totally “get” her worry.
Can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear this love fest with the poem. I wonder if there’s a way to communicate it to Donald Hall. He ain’t getting any younger.
LikeLike