Elegy for Oz the Great

He was not meant to live, they said.
Born red-bagged into a warm April day,
lungs drowning in the fluid of his own beginning,
he rose anyway.
The foal with pneumonia, sepsis,
the frail breath of a “dummy” horse—
he was stitched into this world
by luck, by medicine, by stubborn will.
Already a miracle. Already a legend.

Through scars he walked,
a bowed tendon before his youth had cooled,
a suspensory torn, a leg corded in confinement.
Any one of these should have been the end.
Yet the shaggy colt in the second-to-last stall
grew into a partner who refused to yield.
Not sound, not simple,
but yours.

Sixteen years you lived entwined,
his mischief written across pastures and trails.
Endurance miles unspooled beneath his hooves,
fifties conquered, holds endured,
his body failing and returning,
always one more comeback.
Fans gathered—some in person,
many from far-flung screens—
drawn not to perfection,
but to the raw spark of a creature
who refused the limits set against him.

He was your solace, your foil,
your heart horse.
When the world pressed grief against your ribs,
you buried your face in his mane,
and his clown’s lip, his silly wiggle,
reminded you to breathe.
Ozzy the Great, who made you laugh
when tears were heavier than stone.

This winter, the ground itself betrayed him—
mud, ice, and rutted earth
conspiring against a body held together
by years of healed wounds.
The right front leg, his oldest enemy,
at last surrendered.
Still, he lifted his head with bright eyes,
licked your face,
stood proud even as he leaned on memory
more than bone.

You did the hardest thing—
called the vet, stroked his tangled forelock,
fed him peppermints enough for a feast,
groomed every favorite itch one last time.
He made you laugh even then,
as if to ease your breaking.
And when it was time,
you held his head,
whispering love into his ears.
Your voice carried him down
as the needle carried him away.

JR screamed his grief to the sky,
a sound to pierce the marrow,
hooves hammering the pasture
as if to summon him back.
You wept with your face in his mane,
held his body cooling against your lap,
while the earth seemed too small
to contain so much absence.

Now, the pasture is quiet.
The halter hangs.
JR walks slower, eyes searching.
And you, who counted grain buckets,
who scanned the fence-line each day,
find yourself reaching for a life
no longer there.

Yet his story is not gone.
It lives in the friends who wept,
in the strangers he charmed,
in the endurance miles you carved together,
in the photographs, the laughter, the scars.
It lives in the rider he made you become.
It lives in your own breath,
which he steadied a thousand times.

Rest easy, Ozzy the Great.
Run now in endless fields,
your mane forever tangled in spring wind,
your goofy lip turned toward joy.
The years you should not have had
you filled to bursting.
The heart that outlasted your body
beats still—
in the woman who loved you,
and in the countless lives you touched.

You were miracle.
You were fire.
You were legend.