Portside

I stand with the horses of the Civil War who cantered across
   these grasses that stitched together
men's fields of fighting, horses who carried the cavalry, artillery,
   wounded soldiers and supplies.

I stand with every ghost horse of the Civil War whose
   extraordinary panoramic vision meant
he saw--all around him, all at once--the 350 degrees of danger
   he did not flee alone because

horses remain together, regardless, languishing, while
   their sensitive ears, scented with earth
and sweat, could hear, over two miles in the distance,
   the terrible grumble, and rumble, and

roar, / . . . the battle was on once more--as a poet wrote about
   General Sheridan's ride on his black horse Winchester,
a steed who Swept on, with his wild eyes full of fire,
   and survived far

longer than the 1.5 million-plus horses, mules and ponies who
   perished under my Southern skies
that at sunset and sunrise blush pink and red,
   like the fresh-torn flesh of horse, or human.

Pvt. Ezra E. Stickley lost his horse at Antietam:
   The third shell struck and killed my horse
and bursting, blew him to pieces, knocked me down, of course,
   and tore off my right arm . . . 

I stand with the ghosts of equines who, diseased with
   "glanders," died from abscessed
and ulcerated lungs, equines whose saddles and harnesses
   never fit their bony bodies covered

in infected sores, horses who were hungry, thirsty,
   listless, who, as one Union
general observed, were destroyed by the soldiers'
   hard and unnecessary riding.

Horses' cracked hooves sunk in muddy creeks they slurped
   from when men lowered their
reins long enough for anything alive to close its eyes in the 
   weather of war that hung over

these valleys where I stand with my horses, where wind howls
   all day across the foothills of
the Appalachians, across the bodies of the mules who pulled
   carriages carrying cannons for

miles until, utterly drained, they dropped, only to be shot.
   A captain in a Massachusetts cavalry
wrote to his mother about horses: You have no idea of their
   sufferings . . . I do the best I can . . .

but war is cruel. . . .  So I have one rule, a horse must go until
   he can't be spurred any further,
and then the rider must get another horse as soon as possible 
   he can seize one.

Out of the forgotten millions, some were storied:
   Robert E. Lee's "Traveller," Stonewall Jackson's
"Little Sorrel," Ulysses Grant's "Cincinnati,"
   Philip Sheridan's "Winchester."

As for the rest, Shoot the horses, men commonly
   called out and, heaped with pain, horses collapsed.
The number . . . was high, said a general.
   They lay like the men, in all attitudes.

Lisa Couturier comments, "Horses and mules in the Civil War did as they were told. As our captives, we placed them in peril, something we continue to do today--to racehorses, carriage horses, and work horses (and donkeys, mules, and ponies) all over the world."