On the evening of the day that Lewis Johnson passed away,
it was nearly dark when we made our way back home
from working on our daughter’s barn over in Missouri.

In the hollow spaces formed below the trees,
Randa and I tended to the needs of the horses,
dumping feed into buckets and mucking the paddock.

We thought of Lewis and the last time he came to trim,
moving slow, breathing hard, and taking time to rest
after each hoof had been clipped and rasped.

Cancer and chemo had stripped away muscle,
all the hair on his head,
and his great, black, cowboy mustache.

That was six months ago on a chilly April day
in northeastern Kansas and I remember thinking, 
“This might be the last time he’s able to come and do this.”

It was.

We felt the sadness of those shadows 
beneath the sixty-year-old cottonwood
that spans out over the round pen,

That same great tree he had stood beneath,
grateful for shade on blistering days,
and we marveled at the way he handled the horses:

Thick arms, hard shoulders, and strong hands
spanning decades of knowing and doing,
speaking gently to the geldings and moving smoothly.

One of us held each horse 
while he sliced off frayed layers of the frog,
nipped away the fractured edges of the hoof.

Then, holding the foot between his thighs—
living hide held against the tanned leather of his farrier’s chaps—
planed the bottom smooth and flat.

Finally, bracing the foot against the steel stand,
his hands swinging in the arc of a smile,
he smoothed the outside edge with a coarse file.


And after he’d finished each horse, 
he’d softly rub its neck and scratch its withers,
Pat him a few times and say, “You’re a good boy.”

Then, he’d turn to whoever was holding the rope,
grin and say, “You gotta take time to love on ‘em 
and thank ‘em.”

With glistening eyes, I leaned against the cold metal rails,
looked up after a moment and saw a nearly full moon 
glowing like the touch of God above the eastern ridge,

Framed by the silhouetted shape of autumn leaves
hanging in the hollow space of heavy limbs
in the slight chill of a November night,

Needing every bit of light that a moon could manage.