Santa Anita
They look so far from here, the clouds at Santa Anita.. the holy saint’s light hit my face.. I closed my eyes. The red inside my eyelid started forming a painting.. a memory.. a face ..a fantasy faded coming from god knows where.
Oh the calmness of my muscles, how heavily drugged they seem. The sun beat down on my outstretched forearm. I opened my palm.. then closed it. The trees dangled against the red sky, their image interfered with by waves of heat.
I sat up. One minute till post. Race #9 – No. 2 – Dancing Noelle
How that name infused me with a rush of memory.. clutching to the wager slip my eyes felt affected by a havenly influence. The superimposed images of the racehorse, dark mane running long and wild, and of her.. who I haven’t seen in all these years since grade school. My early sense of beauty proving permanent, tied in knots to my being.
And what did it mean that the horse finished dead last? Graceful strides none the less, I couldn’t take my eyes off Dancing Noelle. Wanting a more obvious dialogue I watched until the horse left my view.
Santa Anita.. what a site.
I went inside and alone walked down the clean long hallways. The bathroom was empty. I washed my hands, wet my face then dried it off. I took another moment to look in the mirror and laugh to myself.. this is what I do now.. going around alone.. the wild freedom of acting without others knowing. I passed through places being so heavily altered by each without leaving behind any mark of my own existence. With no future in mind every place brought up only the past and so I was moving among fields of nostalgia.. unchangeable romantic views..
Choosing a winner was an exercise of faith for someone like me who didn’t know a thing about horses. I simply had to browse the names on the next race and wait for one to mean something.
Race #10 – No. 2 – Ann Arbor Eddie
Ann Arbor.. how funny and how inevitable that a racehorse’s name would remind me of that which I can never forget. Before Florida, before New York, Ann Arbor is where I found you. Was it reincarnation? Or just a message passed along through long travelled currents of wind. Did you think that I’d forgotten you, baby? Did you think that maybe I’d stop calling you that.. and every other sweet name I still whisper at the moonlight that means you..
I noticed an immediate change in the painting when I walked out. Pink clouds, blue sky. White fence, black dirt, tan horse, blue bird.. white number 2.
How I let it all change me, that painting.. in nobody’s eyes but mine..
In my daze I saw her alone at the front about to win. A perfect gallop, playing on loop. I couldn’t help but smile for us as I always do in the end.
That was the last race of the day. The orange sun started to burn into the ocean and so I too laid myself back down to get baked and gaze at the infinite past above me.
I couldn’t begin to tell you what I saw in the clouds