A Morning Among the Mules

My neighbor keeps two mules and a pasture that catches the first warm light of spring, and this morning she waves me through the gate with my stool and my board. The mules doze standing up, shifting their weight the way boats shift at a mooring. I sit close enough to hear them breathe.

Their coats are not brown. Nothing alive is only brown. In this light they carry violet and roan and a gray that leans toward plum, and I spend most of the first wash just finding that color, adding and rinsing until the puddle in the mixing well looks like the shadow under a willow.

One mule opens an eye, considers me, and decides I am no more interesting than a fence post. I take it as a compliment. Painting animals from life mostly means painting their stillness, and being still enough yourself that they offer it to you.

The wind comes up before noon and the paper dries faster than I can keep the edges soft, so the last passes are drybrush, willow leaves flicked in with the side of the brush. Then it is done, and the mules have not moved.