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Poem, by joancolby
Elgin, IL US

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Poem

DEAD HORSES

Now that they are dead or gone, the dream
is always of a field where running horses
flash past, hooves catching and echoing light,
the grass lush, milkweed or Queen Anne's lace
along the fencerows, then suddenly it's winter
snow is falling, shapes are haloed, the sky is bleak.

You might awaken, amazed the sound of horses
has passed, diminished just as a streak of daylight
pours through the curtains, fills bastions of lace
as your eyes fill with sorrow recalling a winter
where nothing ever thawed, each vista bleak,
you knew the vault of loss, the end of dreams

but would not acknowledge it, that blight of light
unraveling the seams of some grandmother's lace
concoction that formed a history, that overwintered
in every house you slept in, every bleak
ceiling that you woke to emptying dreams
into a landscape now bereft of horses.

Those horses, the dappled one like old lace
fading into the slushy nouns of winter
its whites and blacks and greys as bleak
as a deserted park, no childhood dreams
anchored by swingsets or gymnastic horses
on which you vaulted, slim and young and light

as any snowflake in any kind of winter,
the brilliant sled-filled one, even the bleak
fog frosted dawns, the ones that hid all dreams
until they burst from the icy mists like horses
racing to the barns in that first light
presaging hunger, muzzles coated with the lace

of their breathing, how they stormed the bleak
hollows where your final splintered dreams
corroded. You want them now, those horses
crashing the earth with sound as if light
had been surpassed by speed, as if the laces
that bind you to your bones gave way to winter's

blast, unreining every dream, freeing the horses
of your past, lightening that blanket of heavy lace
until you open your arms to winter and everything holy or bleak.

Description: This is the title poem from my latest book "Dead Horses" published by FutureCycle Press.

Photo Posted: Nov 14,2012 Photo Viewed: 396

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