Goldenroses

It has the potential to be a terrifying audible mix of drums and tanks, a relentless droning that truly sounds like the approach of Armageddon.  Combine it with the participants’ close physical proximity, their speed, and the dirt that is literally Flying Everywhere, and it is difficult to understand why anyone would want to be a professional jockey.  The thing you are trying to persuade to do something can seemingly turn on you in a moment out of unbridled fear—making the name of the bridle that much more appropriate– and your peril then belongs to them. 

Yet there it was, the 152nd running of the Kentucky Derby, an event that superbly buries the potential brutality of the day in revelry, floppy hats, and mint juleps. At its worst moments, the beauty of horse racing seems nothing more than a masquerade of what some say is its ugly underbelly, an industry rife with bad actors, drugging, the beating of gorgeous animals, and those overstimulated by the search for the perfect trifecta, all in search of fame and riches.  To others, it is the pinnacle of days, nay (neigh?) years of building moments of discipline and focus on top of one another, of looking beyond the mass of sinew some see to find a heart, a thoughtful identity that considers it a good day when the cool grass under the wide shade of an oak is just tall enough to nip off the seed heads, then trot to the nearby cool stream, creating a breeze that pulls mane and tail back in a perfect coiffure even Elvis never realized.  Literally harnessing that flow on a track is the goal of those who pursue its achievement for all the right reasons.  Some of both manage to find their way to Churchill Downs.

Horse races have other contrasts as well.  There are horses who have to start fast, even though their histories suggest they fade, or have nothing more to offer as the race draws to a close. Then there are the late bloomers, the ones who get about halfway through the race, then seem newly alert to the idea that they have this wide-open space ahead of them, and that running is their birthright.

That’s what happened at Running 152, as the horses favored to win took the inside track and refused to yield ground.  This left the later bloomers no choice but to weave through the middle of the track like pedestrians in a hurry on a New York sidewalk, using the outside span as a last resort.

Two horses did just that with an eighth of a mile—about two city blocks—left in the race.  In movements that attested to the poetry of sport, the jockey on Golden Tempo (23-1 odds of winning) rode his charge with the horse’s soul in his hands, a demonstration of fusion that can only be described as dance.  They did not charge to the finish line; they powerfully, elegantly flowed to it, beating the other outside horse at their side by just a nose—a horse ridden, it turns out, by the brother of the jockey on Golden Tempo, who held his brother’s hand right after the finish.

Much has rightly been made of this being the first horse to earn the Roses that is trained by a woman. Given the rich metaphors of the day, she also helped give us an experience so applicable to life itself, we can use its lessons as our shade of a great oak, whenever life considers our motives or abilities to be a long shot.

In a Child’s Eyes I See

In a child’s eyes
I see each day’s new joys
The sugar and the snakes
Of both the girls and boys
A peace in their hearts
No fairy tale can find
A hushed kind of love
That leaves the world behind.
How each day is so free
In a child’s eyes I see.

In a child’s eyes
I see the fears of youth
The heartbreak of a dream
That must give way to truth
Their tears ask us why
Or what and who and how
With hugs and quiet words
We answer them—for now.
The start of being free
In a child’s eyes I see.

In a special friend
My thoughts and deeds are wed
The feelings there to cry
The joy to smile instead
A reason to share
The many things I’ve done
A reason to be
And a reason to become
A special friend so true
Is what I see in you,

In a child’s eyes
I see each day’s new joys
The snails and the spice
Of both the girls and boys
And in their search for truth
I see the simple way
That you and I still grow
In every single day.
The strength for you and me
In a child’s eyes I see.

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