Little Horse

Kim Fahner teaches English and history at Marymount Academy in Sudbury,
Ontario.

Susan Downe’s Little Horse speaks to our mortality, and to the
uplifting drift of spirit and hope.

The first part of the book is dark in that breast cancer hovers like a
bird of prey. In the first poem, “Little Horse,” Downe writes of a
little horse that has “tethered itself / to a mothering place.” The
hypocrisy of this cancer, which kills flesh that once gave nourishment
to children through breast milk, is obvious and stark.

The first stanza of “Pruning” speaks of pruning raspberry bushes in
the garden, but the second stanza speaks of surgery. The parallel
structure within this poem is elegant, with a distinctive move from
metaphorical to literal prunings. The reality of the situation sinks in
when Downe writes: “I’ll ask a man who doesn’t know / my face / to
cut away my breast.” Later, in “Room,” she refers to the surgery
as “the cutting day.” These poems are at once raw and striking in
their sense of beauty and hope.

In “Hard,” Downe retains her sense of humour when her granddaughter
asks to play with the new prosthetic breast in the bathroom. In the
book’s final section, the poet writes that she is “eager for the
lifting-off / and you and I / among the clouds / fly up, and all the
people / that we love fly up.” Downe should be commended for a
collection that sings so clearly.