Sleeping Horse Caught Snoring Loudly

“Wake up! Wake up man! You’re scaring half the neighborhood!”

“Huh? What? I don’t snore. Go away. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘let sleeping horses lie?’”

There is nothing, and we mean nothing, like a midsummer day’s nap. You know, when half the year is behind you, and half the year is ahead of you, and you hit that sweet spot in July, where everything is all strawberries and blueberries and alfalfa and the summer sun is like the shepherd watching over the clouds, which graze like sheep across the big blue sky overhead. We survived winter just for this brief moment. Didn’t Shakespeare write about such times as this?

What could this horse be dreaming about? Galloping through the field with a favorite mare, or leaping over mountains and canyons, his mane freely flowing as the earth rolls mellifluously beneath his hooves? Cool breezes and clear streams, oats and carrots and sugar cubes? “Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”

The guy with the camera is an annoying mosquito. He want to swat him, but his legs are paralyzed as his brain revels in hypnopompic reverie. Besides, what bad thing can happen to him at siesta, when all the world seems to draw a truce for one hour? Everybody just drops to the ground. Milk and cookies? They don’t need no stinkin’ milk and cookies! Fresh hay and warm sun is the best soporific. Napping is a luxury money can’t buy it. There it is, for all of you, just take it! But so many of them can’t. They have to work, or stay awake through an onerous economics lecture. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” The last thing he want to do is pull a plough or jump fences or win races. Just lying there is the ultimate pleasure, like a lazy amoeba, blah!

What a wonderful world to be brought up in. Green rolling hills, green grass, clean air—the confluence of all good fortune has come together in his life, right there, right now in this pasture. And he wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else in the world. Birds have cages, dogs have chains, but the universe has given him the great, wide open as his domain. All his needs are met, and he wants for naught. Makes him feel sorry for city horses. “My soul is in the sky.”

The nap is certifiably universal to all terrestrial life. Look at his buddies nearby, they get the picture. So do the woodchucks and voles, the snakes and the moles. Even the birds and the bees do it! Let’s do it, let’s fall asleep. He wishes he could just lie there forever, but alas, the afternoon sun inches toward the horizon and the spell will soon enough be broken. A shade will creep over the trees on the western edge of his pasture, reminding him to stand up and walk it off. His mistress will check his water and hay, and give him and his brothers a brushing. He doesn’t really need it, but she does it just because. “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”