Ranch Hand

On Hearing the Bell’s Call to Evensong at the Holy Faith Church of Santa Fe

Then agreeing we needed to find a lightning-free place to shelter and the statue of Saint Francis was delicate and resembled that boy from Paterson Catholic who resembled Percy Bysshe Shelley (and how we read poetry and ate candied violets in the cafeteria and who was most surely gay which we had yet to know) and because I needed rescue and Father Robyn was lighting incense and preparing to pray for the sick and dying in the comfort of pale wood and colored glass and because one of those windows had a dog with a blue collar who was the dog of the man who made the window and of course was dead and it was September 11th and R. had just remembered that it was the anniversary of his mother’s death and we sat and listened for the want of holy faith and for K. who is dying and all the beasts I hold dear.

 

 

 

 

On Seeing the Bobcat as He Lay in the High Grass Observing the Chickens

Then Donkey and I watching as he bolted into the Coyote Bush but not far and turned to look at us and we felt his wild-self looking at our wild-selves and assessments quickly made and I knew it wasn’t fear and Donkey knew it wasn’t fear and today’s allotment of feral-ness settled bone-deep without a performance of beast-ness-in-shoes and walking on past the chickens with this story to tell K. who was today able to get out of bed to greet us even though her pain was becoming unmanageable and her wild-self hovered above her like a mystic.

 

 

 

 

On Driving Past the Feed Store as I was Leaving the Hospital after Seeing K. now Immobilized with Pneumonia

Then racing to the ranch and being late to bring the animals in and knowing they would be waiting anxious as the dusk and the goat knocking the feed bucket out of my hands in his ardor for me and his pellets and envisioning the rough-hewn wooden donkey from the pair from K.’s Noah’s ark of which she gave me one and told me she was keeping the other and not to tell anyone and remembering it safe on my desk and thinking I must cut tufts of hair from the donkeys and braid them for K. to bring with her like a sacrament and me Noah-like imagining all the beasts calculating my every intention and how I had no mastery and would soon, and certainly, let them down.

 

 

 

 

On Opening My Front Door and Discovering My Work Boots had Been Stolen

Then going back inside to tell B. and put on trainers and try not to think it was an omen but knowing it was and hearing on the road to the ranch that protestors had shut down the bridge to the west and try not to think it was an omen but knew it was and drove up past the donkeys still in their stalls and at the yurt K. was in bed and for the first time not well enough to be down in the yard to watch me brush coat, clean hooves, and kiss the doleful, whiskered muzzles of our beloveds and she told me the oncologist had told her treatment wasn’t working and on further discussion, 2 to 4 months, and I went down the hill by myself knowing I would order new boots like a deposit of faith and laid my body against dull brown flanks and cried for our loss and donkey succor.

 

 

 

 

On Watching Donkey Turn Away from K. While Trying to Train Her to Mount the Step of the Yurt

Then Donkey continuing to refuse the treat from K. who has managed to struggle out of bed this morning and how I know K. wants so badly to watch this donkey thrive and the treat is held right at her muzzle and she at 3 might still bite in search of sweetness and staring at me as K. implored her with words and hard-baked grains & molasses and Donkey seeming to say I won’t see you and then K. handing me the cookie and sloping deeper into the chair and I move away as now I have to find the way that Donkey would mount the step or we all stand defeated and finally her left-front hoof touches the step and Donkey claims her reward from me and Donkey and I walk down the hill to pasture knowing that she had to have seen the cookie and knowingly refused it as if to tell us I can smell through the skin of the dying

 

 

 

 

On Hearing How the Ambulance Assistants Carried K. Down the Hill to the Yurt

Then K. telling me that she knows she will never again leave the this place and I knowing that’s true and then slowly driving down the hill past the seasonal pond where the Mallards come yearly and how she calls them Ralph and Alice and I can’t manage to laugh at the anachronism as everything is out of its time and the donkeys and goats turn to me as I come into the yard as if I am a prophet and opening the pen to go to halter and Donkey tires of me memorizing her by the green sweet smell of teff and tarweed and nudges me as gently as 800 pounds allows and yet bearing my insistence on leaning my full weight right into her as we breathe in unison and the halter tied as ritual with the lead rope our sweet agreement and we hear the Flicker who pecks so slowly it sounds like a hobby and she and I walking, as if to sacrifice, one more day.

 

 

 

 

On Filling out Next Year’s Calendar with the Monthly Vaccination and Medical Schedule for the Animals

Then sitting and knowing that there will be no next year and K. needing to continue to honor the animals’ need for her and her need to care for them and how a life has been built on this unburdened commitment and this tenderness rises over us like an omission and remembering that I once knew the Beatitudes by heart and how convenient it is that thinking of the Bible makes me think of donkeys and care becomes blessedness as that is what is called for in the presence of donkeys and the divine and opening the door to leave and noticing how the donkeys’ brays seem to cry out for us and how the goats no longer walk up the hill, as was their habit, to spend their days near her and how soon neither she nor I will be the one to go to them with apples and our own hunger and lead them back home.

 

 

 

 

On Trying to Explain My Devotion to Donkey to E. Who Has No Pets and Quietly Rolls Her Eyes When I Tell Her

Then realizing how useless language is in the presence of devotion and how my hip hits Donkey’s hip as I hold her back hoof to clean it and how attending to feet is seen as humility and how Donkey as a yearling would kick out so badly that we couldn’t handle her and this was one of many times that it occurred to K. that she might have to sell Donkey and instead she asked for help where none had been forthcoming and she asked anyway because didn’t D. owe her at least this after hiding Donkey’s mother’s pregnancy and how help never came and Donkey kicked and reared up and I was afraid too and how we found the farrier who showed us how to tie her leg up so we could clean and how he told us of a trainer who showed us we could one day untie that knot and how K. and my devotion to this worthy beast no matter how she had arrived was how we loved each other and remembering that I rubbed K.’s feet the last day I saw her and now how my hip might never touch Donkey’s again with that strong reassurance that I will not harm her and she will not harm me and that we exist in pure trust and how K. taught me this, only this, is the language of devotion.

 

 

 

 

On Cutting Hair from the Tails of the Donkeys and Goats to Bring to K. Who Is Now Bedridden

Then making sure the elastics were secure and labeling them in careful script and wondering if this was a kindness or ghoulish and thinking there is only one way to know and walking up the hill rather than drive because I want this place so firmly in my bones and passing the oak that fell 2 winters ago now in pieces and realizing that decay and uncertainty play a kinder role than my understanding deserved and passing the chicken’s yellow coop which looked cared for by spirits next to yet another giant fallen oak and mounting the stairs and knocking and entering the yurt shoeless like a pilgrim and giving K. the tails of tails and wanting her to smell their redolence and feel their wiry existence and she doing that and I waiting and silent and watching for all the dead whose hair I’ve combed.

 

 

 

 

On Leaving the Yurt After Reminding K. I Would Soon Be Away for Two Weeks

Then going down to the yard and turning the donkeys out and smelling the cold-bright Sun and the green shoots of California winter and hearing the staccato of woodpeckers and the tremble of the shooting range up the valley and like the plowman in Bruegel the Elder’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” I rake donkey and goat shit in lieu of imagining death and hear amongst the guns and up- wind traffic the sound of L. playing violin for K. in her bed and thinking (like Williams after Bruegel) how I feel “…the year was/awake tingling…” and how the Bach suites sound as if they have no origin and my duty to the animals is my scripture and K. having told me she will miss me and I’m afraid to die without my watcher and how music is floating as the goats follow it up the hill and K. in her bed with her wings dryly folded.

 

 

 

 

On Arriving in Paris After a Twelve Hour Flight and Loading Our Belongings onto the RER and Remembering to Breathe in a Foreign Tongue

Then turning on my phone and finding out K. had died as we took off and trying to signal to B. who was an aisle away and he looking-up and by my tears already knowing and I thinking hadn’t hospice said K. would stop eating and drinking then probably stay alive for a week or ten days and hadn’t she eaten just the day before as I sat with her and rubbed her feet and laughed at our beloved donkeys but now in my hand the text says Hi has anyone called you? and not needing the word died on which to hang my grief and knowing how much K. had wanted me there but she hadn’t needed me there and that it was the needing of human and beast that I would miss the most and then quickly wondering how soon the animals would need to be gone and would I still be here in a city so beautiful that no one needs to look up or thinks of donkeys and dreaming that night (in a deep-drift of restless) of hauling manure and how I feel this devotion in my shoulders and the soft down of donkey-muzzle on my lips and how this temporal upset was greater than jet lag and how my life on the ranch has been a compression of time, a time of donkeys.

 

 

 

 

 

On Writing R. After a Week to Tell Him K. Had Died and We Need to Start the Transfer of the Donkeys to Him and Asking How This Will Work

Then watching the fog gather in a foreign valley after not having slept well thinking of donkeys and already missing how I gather strength from their need for me and mine for them and how soon that will no longer be my life and I am here losing time and sleep and dear companionship on another continent and walking for miles to rent a car in hope of visiting Old World donkeys while crying for K. and New World donkeys and there are no cars because the festival is here and 100’s of thousands descend on this grey stone town and the fantasy of this town and my hope of seeing donkeys quits me and weeping quietly over a cup of earl gray in the babble of language and how it gets in the way of my grief and yet I cry in cafés hoping no one sees and knowing no one cares but K. would care and the donkeys care deeply and the French donkeys might have cared too and in the park across from the apartment was a Percheron mare and I remember the time I sent K. some photos of horses I met and she said their ears…how sad and we laughed and I walk up the hill and approach the mare and tell the woman grooming her I have 3 donkeys in French which is not true and has never been true and will never be true in any language and I walk away without the sweet smell of donkeys on my hands.

 

 

 

 

On Leaving Amsterdam with Many Delays and Spending 20 Hours in the Air

Then finally seeing land and realizing over Seattle while still hours from home that I was flying back into K’s death and mourning the loss of sustenance I hadn’t known I needed and how that sustenance had hair and fur and a warm beating heart and that they might have by now already learned how not to need me and the last leg of my trip home would bring Devil Mountain into view and my heart is broken by donkey dreams and old goats that lean into my thighs and a dead woman who all had lived on that mountain and would never return to that mountain and how Donkey had arrived not breathing nor standing then breathing and standing and already forgetting how cruelly air hurts.

 

 

 

 

On Tying Up the Donkeys on the Round-Pen Rail While Waiting for the Trailer to Come to Take Them Away

Then loading them in so effortlessly it seemed like a piety and following the transport north on its 2-hour journey worrying they felt as I did and that this was not anthropomorphizing but the knowledge that donkeys love too and driving over the open space K. called Kite Hill and not seeing the White-Tailed Kite at the crest hovering distinctly in place and instead my heart beat-hovering over this time searching for its own food and how on this long drive from home we travel through wetlands that Donkey will never see and how uniquely she and I have always moved together and how the Lesser Sandhill Crane flies over and then north and even I can identify this spirit by its long neck and hanging feet and slow-quick beat of flight and though I am generally not prone to visions I imagine this bird as K. and remember how she had released healed raptors onto the mountain lured with freedom and dead rats and my wild-self feels the tug of expulsion and my magnetic north moves once more.

 

 

 

 

On Being at Home and Folding the Clean Eye-Cloths for the Donkeys

Then smelling the cloths without their scent and the absence feels immense and wishing my hands will smell forever of donkey and hoping my every touch tells them when you’re gone I hope I need you more than you’ll ever need me and remembering K telling me I wish I had met you years before and we could have trained Donkey to be ridden and gone up the mountain together and I pointing out to her that I had come when Donkey had come and that there were no other years and I thought how we’ve been training for death and how death demands solitude and I sit to write K. a letter and remember that I didn’t know it would be too late and staying quietly in my room like a child without supper.

Jacqueline Hughes Simon is a poet, hand-sewn bookmaker and Letterpress operator and artist. She received her Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Saint Mary’s College of California. Her writing has appeared in the The Cortland Review, El Portal, Mudlark, Stirring, The Rail, Tupelo Quarterly, and others.

Jacqueline was, until recently, a volunteer and board member of an environmental education non-profit, where she worked with and trained donkeys and is now pursuing certification in large animal massage. Which, in her opinion, constitutes the most interesting thing about her.