The Rescue

The man sits in a timelessness   
with the horse under him in time   
to a movement of legs and hooves   
upon a timeless sand.

Distance comes in from the foreground   
present in the picture as time
he reads outward from
and comes from that beginning.

A wind blows in
and out and all about the man   
as the horse ran
and runs to come in time.

A house is burning in the sand.   
A man and horse are burning.   
The wind is burning.
They are running to arrive.

Copyright Credit: Robert Creeley, “The Rescue” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press, www.ucpress.edu.
Source: Selected Poems (University of California Press, 1991)