Slacktrack

Slacktrack

Slowly

stalling,

neigh calling,

horse-sighing

nay.

Stallion heaving

breast-swollen breath.

Hot throat, clammy neck,

hoarse.

Sinews welter,

withers twitch

with weather sweat

on lather neck.

Dimlight dawn fondles

his fetlocks,

wet-clung with frost,

wreathed in white dew,

snowhair damp on hazel-locks.

Muzzle heat,

Nostril mist,

he missed the pounding herd

on horse-mate steppe.

Now footcuffed,

he coughs.

Sacked,

he bows,

sag-eared.

I prick my ears, pry my eyes,

feel stung

on tip of tongue

stuck to my roof

of horse-mouth,

wracked by words

wrought on wind,

spell-written,

twisted from bit,

wrung from bridle.

I trace his pace

with racing step,

with sudden fall,

braked.

Sigh-bitten,

known in his nose,

he passes by my sky-window -

my fleeting car riding by.

I stare out

at star-lit mane,

hushed

by his faltered rush.

Stagger foot.

Slow from fold,

slow bridle gate.

Bridal gait sloth,

now life-cut.

No mate.

He knew by their walk it led away,
He knew by their stealth, they stole him.

Stolen from stall, slackened slow,
His hoof-fall fell quiet.
He smelt on their hands the sweat of a fall,
He felt on the wind the breath of a stop,
He heard the train down a life-long rail,
on the tracks of unknown days,
the way he wondered why clop.

He nosed the rime-sighs of night
under heft of heavy riders.

He reared at their whispers,

at tones unknown.

Their hush-mumbles rang

in his marrow and bone.

Firesky smouldered

on eaves of wood

in the beams of dawn,

on edges drawn

in the margins of night.
He tracked the chart of days

on the footprint folds

where he danced
a horse trance,

stepped a last trot,
as lovers in Llanfihangel

careered and pranced

in red-fire hall

in the late dew

of a late Fall.                                

–Nathan Paul Hillman, 24/25 October 2011