This page from The Dance Magazine, dated July 1928, features Mignon Laird. She was one of the dancers at the time who had their own domestic zoos. Laird’s father was involved with the circus. I believe he was promoting circuses, but he also had elephants at one point and aspired to have his own circus. The Thornton side of our family knew the Lairds, and my mother was named after Mignon.
Clare, last night I saw horses, more than a dozen of them. First, I saw the dust they were raising as they ran, then I heard their hooves on earth, that dry drumming, then I saw them through the trees just on the other side of the Virgin River. They weren’t wild but they had enough space to act wild. There they were in the sage and dry grass moving like the river when it’s boated, fluid like that and strong, wanting nothing but this moment, nothing but each other. Keep writing your horse poems, Clare. A horse is a heart outside the human body who reminds us we each carry a heart within us, one that beats like a hoof hitting dirt. We need horses more than ever. We need your poems.
My friend Jose Faus in the distance at Baker Wetlands in Kansas, 2017. It was evening. We were alone. I saw a Wilson’s Snipe. I’d recently stopped writing poetry. Jose, a poet, ventured into birding with me so we could spend time together that way. It wasn’t half bad, being a birder and not a poet.
My family on my mother’s side. 1. My great-grandparents, Jesse and Sarah. 2. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, and horses. 3. My great-grandparents on their porch, children all around the place, many outside the frame. 4. My grandfather, great-grandfather, great-grandmother, a great-aunt, another great-aunt, I think, and a baby who was supposed to be her sibling but was really her child. This was their not-nice house. 5. My family on the porch of their nice house. The dead (suicide, unknown cause) are propped up in framed images in front of the living.
Dana Henry Martin 