Tell It Slant, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

6

On Touching Ground

Jericho Parms

Deep within the galleries of the Metropolitan, a glass wall case barely contains the wild form of a racehorse. Veiny grooves mark the horse’s flank and haunches, its powerful shoulders, crest, the forelock of its mane. The tail extends like a petticoat train in its cantering wake. Head high, the horse is poised, proud.

Perhaps even more than his dancers, more than his nude women bathing, horses captured the heart of Edgar Degas. Yet they all shared similar traits—in their ephemeral postures, in their show jumps and pliés, in the strength and energy of their legs cast in bronze. I peer in close. All four of the horse’s hooves are suspended in midair.

Degas’s bronze is polished, near black. The light catches ...