A horse head

And another one that wasn’t selected by Visual Verse.
Image by Monica Silva

A horse head

bronze,
streaked with age, antique, ancient,

horse is:

head bent, bowed, broken,
sawn off at base,
roots cut off,
eradicated, uprooted, rootless.

You raced at Lascaux,
remember?

Horse, we took
the free-flowing movement,
wind-muscled,
saddled and bridled it,

(Homeric horse,
Scythian,
and long before that,
you were when, where,
the plains of the night
met the fields of the day)

and now we have wrung out the dignity,
majesty, wise nobility,

you bow out,
weeping verdigris tears.

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Microfiction: Destiny

Sorry to take a cynical view of this photo, but that’s life, for some.

photo by Melanie Dretvic via Unsplash

 

‘When I’m too big for my pony, Daddy’s going to sell her and buy me a real horse, an old, used one like you, that I can practice on until I get good, then he’ll buy me a better one.’

‘And when you get a better one, little girl, what will happen to me?’

The little girl shrugged and said, ‘You’ll go to the knackers, I suppose, where all old horses go.’

Microfiction: Galloping

99 word story for Charli Mills’ writing challenge.

The train lurches at an unvarying pace. The same countryside trundles past the window, same fields, rivers, woods. Identical lines of trees border roads she’s sure run faster than this train. In her head she gallops, fast as a mythological horse, flying winged galloper, eating up the cloud miles that separate the two halves of her heart. In her head she howls with excitement and apprehension.

City approaches. Her hooves slow. What if he isn’t there? When the winged train flies into the station, she clings to the last ticking shreds of incertitude, reluctant to risk hope for death.