Wild Horse

The first time I saw a picture of Terry on a horse, he looked less like a rider and more like in a reunion with his soulmate. As if the two of them had known each other in a previous life and were simply picking up a conversation that had been paused. He sat easy in the saddle, long hair negotiating with the wind, a grin that said he trusted the ground to stay where it was and the sky to mind its own business.

He never wanted to own a horse. That would have been like trying to keep a sunrise in a drawer.

“Horses and birds,” he told me once, very seriously, as if he were presenting a board resolution, “are not for being owned and kept in cages.”

I nodded as though I had always known this and had been waiting for someone to confirm it.

It made perfect sense that he was born in the Year of the Horse. When I told him, he lit up with the pure, delighted approval of a man whose paperwork had finally been processed correctly by the universe. “That’s perfectly accurate,” he said, and I could almost hear the distant sound of hooves agreeing with him.

He lived the way open fields look in early morning. Nothing fenced in. Plenty of room for weather.

This was before illness ever tried to negotiate terms with his body. In those years, Terry moved through life the way a horse runs across a wide plain, not to get anywhere in particular, but because movement itself is a form of joy. He rode whenever he could. Not for sport. Not for photographs. For the simple pleasure of being briefly partnered with another free spirit who had agreed, for an hour or so, to share direction.

Today is the Vietnamese New Year of the Horse.

I imagine him somewhere that has no gates. The air is clear. The footing is good. There is a horse nearby who has already decided he is trustworthy.

He swings up without effort.

Of course he does.

Shall we believe that freedom continues in ways we cannot schedule or supervise? I think he would recommend that policy.

Here’s what I know. Terry never belonged to gravity in the usual way. He belonged to motion, to laughter, to the open idea of what a day could become if you did not overplan it.

Here’s to The Wild Horse.

Still running.
Still unowned.
Still perfectly Terry.