The Negative Capability
of a Horseman
There, freeze-framed,
in black-and-white, my grandfather,
strolling, tapping a cigarette
with his left, while in his right,
the slack rope, yanked at play,
by the momentary give and take
of Tulloch, his companion, leaping mid-air,
and schooling me without a word
in the grip of pressure and release,
where the silent sense of insight,
exposed by the dark room of light,
remains etched in the open grain.
