Gift and Given Over

There went the back and forth of horses in the rain
beside us. But legs and muzzle exhaust, they passed
as shades, whose hooves made of the ever-earth floor
a hollow drum, pacing behind the shifting firs.
Then one showed through an opening between the trees,
came out black and slick as the rained upon asphalt:

Still bystander at the wire fence and nettle,
shaking out its thunderous snorting breath
upon the field's limits and into our hearing,
before going back to the other horse
and the hidden vastness. But while it lingered,
looking without inquisition on our work,

a thousand other creatures' blithesome presences -
the frogs that pounce on silent blades, the spiders;
the worms elastically jigging beneath, and more -
woke like many raindrops, that all at gust once, upon
the trees, spatter, soak, breaking into down-way courses.
And then the presence of long-back, ever before:

one meanwhile moment that is ancient and assures
that not a soul will volley into self all self
without world-field's fence eating, edge enveloping,
dismissing our forensics of the world's trial
we bring forth to show, that are then deemed to be no worth;
always our way displaced with wayside proven larger;
no one exempt from being given gift and given over,
while each is born in the midst of a million births.