Tuesday Poem: "The Ride"

(for Cathy Dee)

You take refuge

in the heaving, sweat-glossed flanks

and in the tirr-rump, tirr-rump, tirr-rump

of the hooves,

falling like finger-drummers on the wide-stretched

verdant heartbeat of Taranaki.

You lose yourself

at a gallop,

wind and motion locked in an intricate dance

across your skin and through your hair.

Some days you samba with the voluptuous tang

of the ocean,

other days you tango with the whip-sharp

snow-scented mountain.

Will there come a day

when a nicker bubbles up, like music,

through your dreams,

drawing you from your bed at dawn to witness a whinny

pluming its signature in the frost-still air?

Then, hypnotised by those bottomless brown eyes,

the hemp-feel hair of the mane

inviting entwining fingers

to take the weight and swing over the broad, bare back,

blood-hot against the daybreak chill.

Your heel

like a trigger finger gently squeezing the flank,

firing you forward for your longest, hardest ride:

past the border of sorrow.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Valley Micropress in whose pages this poem first appeared.