I met Doug Anderson at Blue-Star Equiculture last year, he is a quiet and self-effacing man, as gentle and good-natured as the big horses he loves to photograph. It was awhile before I realized that he is one of America’s most accomplished poets and memoirists. As I have, he has been drawn into the drama of the New York Carriage Horses, and feels passionately that they belong in New York City and must not be banished to oblivion and usefulness by unknowing and arrogant people.

Doug is a beautiful writer, and a wonderfully sensitive photographer as well, he is working on another book of poetry that will be published this coming Spring. He is often at Blue-Star, and I see him in New York City whenever the carriage trade  or the farm is holding an event or needs some help or is under fire. He frequently volunteers at Blue Star.

We seem to get each other, Doug and I, we are different, yet very similar in many ways. We are becoming friends, he is a shy man, I am very much drawn to his company, I admire him. Today, when it poured, he quietly handed me a plastic cover for my camera. He understands sensitivity, he was a combat medic in Vietnam. One of the most interesting elements of the Carriage Horse drama has been meeting the extraordinary people who have gathered around the carriage horses to defend them.

The people in the carriage trade call us angels, we seem to simply appear out of nowhere and become attached to the horses and the people who own and love them and work with them – Doug, the actor Liam Neeson, Sandi Bachon, a videographer, Nina  Gallicheva, photographer, Cathy Stewart, a writer and photographer, a dozen or so others. (And me). I think the horses have called to each of us, each in our own way, to do different things on their behalf.

Doug has an obsession to witness and record, I think it is what writers and poets do.

The horses seem to be like that, they seem to have the power to summon what they need. We all know what is at stake, this is one of the last stands not only of horses, but of the individualism and way of life that supports them. It is about why horses cannot remain in New York, but there is no limit on condos or cars.

We record this story, we chronicle it. We are, I think, a Greek Chorus whispering and wagging our fingers and scolding in the background: this is wrong, this is an injustice,  think about it. I think of us “angels” (I would never use that term to describe myself) as mystics and wanderers, we are all a bit strange,  a band of gifted  misfits and oddballs, creatives who see the story of the carriage horses for what it is, a  perversion of politics, a distortion of animal rights and the love of animals, and the right of good and honest human beings to live in dignity and freedom.

We are a pretty ragtag Army, really, but we definitely are making some noise, kicking up some dust.

The horses have called on our creativity, sharpened it, focused us, given us purpose and meaning, as they wish for themselves.

We seem to get it without being told, we feel it in our bones:  the campaign to save the horses will almost surely destroy them, and our ancient connection with them, an awful mistake that can never be undone. I am very happy to be in the company of these intensely creative oddballs and misfits, outsiders, people who never join anything, banded together in a good cause, in a hard fight.

It is no Vietnam, for sure, but still, it is draining and difficult and disturbing. There is much anger and cruelty in it and a sense of a great wrong.

Doug Anderson finds himself in a different kind of conflict once again, and so do I, but he is  good and true, and I am proud to stand with him and the other angels on behalf of the horses. A club that will have me.