A twist of hair caught on a barb of wire, also a twist around the smooth barrel of the strand. Auburn shot through with white speaks of a roan hide. I pluck the coarse fibers free, feel with a fingertip the sharp point that snagged them, look out over ashen sage and a wash of bunchgrass to the rise of granite jagged ridges and the sweep of horizon climbing up the clouds to the sky above, squint beneath the bright sun and imagine but do not see the strong back, straight legs, and supple neck of the horse. My fingers work the tail hairs into a slim braid, perhaps with which to make a bracelet or necklace or a stampede strap but more likely just a magpie souvenir, like spent shell casings and wind smoothed stones, a thing without purpose but for its bright echoes. Probably this slender lock caught the wire whisking after a fly, but I like to imagine flight, the powerful action of hock and hoof across a broken land wide open for running. As I close the gate and walk back to the rumbling of my truck, I reflect on the new drift fence, the drift of time, that which shifts and that which does not in a place like this.