Bonta's poem is a small scene of patience. A horse is in a bad mood, and the speaker doesn't try to force or fix it. Instead, he sits nearby for "a good while" and talks to the animal about "home and bed", the plainest, coziest things he can think of.
The opening lines are almost blunt. A bad-tempered horse is "hard" and "high", and its anger is "simple fury without much mind." There's a bit of wit in the wordplay: "high horse" suggests pride as well as height. But the speaker doesn't judge the horse. He seems to see its rage as something raw and mindless, not something personal.
The mood shifts from tension to quiet. The short, steady lines feel like the slow pace of the sitting itself. The speaker comes across as calm, unhurried and gentle. The title suggests that this kind of calm, soft talk is the real skill, and the poem lets us feel its effect without ever spelling out what happens next.