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Last night I saw him again, the ghost horse.

In the shade of the moon

I almost walked without notice nearby

but chalked beneath my foot a sign

stand here

alerted.  He took shape

slowly; a curved hoof,

a foreleg suggesting power.

And through his middle some words I could not read

rode him.

We wheeled from Santa Fe

gently into snow.  Trembling,

I read my hands.

By the roadside the horse turned.  I turned

to tell you.

Absent as a watercolor, he blinked

and was gone.

I named her before I bought her. I do that with inanimate objects. I remember a quote from Peter O’Donnell that I haven’t tracked back down along the lines of “You never know when regarding something kindly will be useful to you.”

I named her Carrie. Carrie the Keurig. She was new and red and beautiful and I absolutely didn’t need her. But the garage sale lady priced her at $50. We talked about various things for a half hour and then I asked if she would call me if Carrie didn’t sell. “How much do you want to pay?” She said. “$35,” I said.  Mine, mine, mine.

The challenge may be to justify my purchase to all the people in the college town where I work. Keurig? Keurig? KEURIG? Don’t you know you’re creating more waste for the landfill and killing the environment?

Happily, I don’t feel the need to justify myself. I used to go to coffee shops to write in the early mornings; no more; there’s a cost savings. I buy my coffee pods at Wal-Mart (more college town shudders). I cut open the used pods and put the coffee grounds in our compost. I know the non-profit that shares our office building would be absolutely horrified but they don’t compost, so I don’t care about their opinion.

It all reminds me of the tag line one sees in so many emails: Please Consider the Environment Before Printing This Email. I rarely have a need to print emails but every time I see that tag line I feel a compulsion to print, print, PRINT. My friend Rob wrote an excellent screed on this at his website, Rumblestrip (https://www.rumblestrip.org/2007/03/29/green-signature-drafts/). I have Considered the Environment. And I’m Making My Coffee.

Carrie joins the grand parade of my inanimate object naming. My first vehicle, a Mazda truck, was Ezra, named after a character in Anne Tyler’s “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant”: “I’m trying to get through life as a liquid,” Ezra had said, and Cody (trying to get through life as a rock) had laughed;he could hear himself still.” Cody reminded me of my oldest younger brother Jack, who never saw a brick wall he didn’t want to hit his head against; and Ezra, my youngest younger brother Sam. Jack said that while he would hit the brick wall, I would charm someone into opening a door in it, and Sam would look at the wall and say “I didn’t want to go that way anyway” and walk the other direction. So perhaps Sam wasn’t so Ezra after all. And perhaps I charmed my way through the brick wall of the garage sale lady to the $35 deal.

After Ezra, who I sold to my dad’s friend, who then promptly cracked the engine block by not putting in oil, came Thomas, the Subaru station wagon named after the protagonist in Joan Aiken’s “Voices in an Empty House.” Then the unloved Chevette. Then Evan, named after the friend who sold him to me. Then Calvin-George (Coolidge and Bush). And now Carly (Fiorina). I talk to her when I get the nanny-sound: your seat belt isn’t fastened, you’re out of windshield wiper fluid; you’re out of gas.” Thank you, I say. I appreciate it. And I do.

So every morning I wake early, get to writing, and have a tumbler of Carrie coffee, then drive to my office in Carly, and sit down to work with — what? Damn. I forgot to name the laptop.