Horses for Sale
Gong:
There are two going cheap,
the dark and the grey.
I'm selling 'cos their owner passed away,
name of Lunk, died yesterday
peacefully in his sleep.
(Here, Assistant. Hold 'em a while.)
These two are very versatile:
horses for courses,
horse-hairs for corsairs,
hearses for curses,
hisses for kisses,
fine with kiddies or missus.
You've heard the like, I'd say.
Pulled a phaeton for months, if a day.
Very good at crashes - go on, smile
only kidding. Pulled many a mile.
Got to sell 'em today.
(Hold 'em still, there.)
Like to sell 'em as a pair
The dark he's fiery and wiry - doesn't care -
run hard and then want to play.
The grey is steady, has stamina, she'll stay
the course the while.
Look at 'em nuzzling up to you.
They've taken a shine.
Look at those teeth! If it was to me
I'd keep em. They'd be mine.
But I'm broke. Need the dosh.
Look at their demeanour. So posh
so classy an act. You pursue
your instincts with your purse.
Buy em on that impulse, never curse
or regret the day you met me.
This is it? Let me weigh it.
Let me spill it in my palm.
Done! You'll not regret it.
Never come to any harm.
..........
Now, Lunk. You've let them go.
Let's go too. Here's to sunnier climes.
It we skip sharp we'll beat the snow.
.................................
These are the two horses of Hate and Love conceived in 'Gifts and Shards Vol2' : 'Extremist', and continued in 'Phaeton' and 'Shadows'. They are picked up again in 'Winter Trails' : 'Winter' and 'The Passing of the Grey - a Nightmare' . Now they are yours. Look after them well.
..................................
Morning Walk
Down past blushing council houses,
warm in their salmon render,
over the brook with mats of weed,
up to the more salubrious 'Park'
estate in modern pic-n-mix style,
chunky with porches and attic
windows like a dog's breakfast,
parents streaming from the primary
the two-buggy pavement-takers,
smiling and primping as I approach,
warming to drink-in the 'glamour'
of their shining motherhood,
the singly striding mother with hackles up,
the lugubrious mustachioed man who sniffs,
the hill, telling me I need to get fit.
But on top now, quickening pace,
legging it in raw air like a baked Alaska
inside out, cagoule unzipped to ventilate,
I'm hot from the walk yet chilled
by damp misery of the morning.
Inside the clinic, self important,
over-brisk nurses shepherd their herd
one by one through routines performed
so often they've worn grooves in them.
We can't be trusted to arrive on time so
a constant feed for the consultant
means a full waiting room and TV
on a beige channel. My eyes pass.
On the way back I do my cagoule up,
walk moderately, in no hurry, yet cold
lays a little whip on my flanks it's true.
Not a soul about now, only proximate
rasps of tyres on wet roads punctuate.
Some little girl said: 'Bare trees are boring.'
I laugh but for the first time, end of this
grey January, I deeply long for blossom.
Well. I can whistle for it.
Two seconds of songbird's diamond trill,
hidden in hedge edge of suburbia,
rips the adamantine farce from face
and I am big-babied as much as any
Captain Cat ever was. That will
do me for today, thank you.
...
YOU ARE READING
Winter Trails
PoetryWinter Trails is an album of my poems, journeying through late fall when the wire of the trees begins to dominate, till the end of January. After promoting it and it soaring to three quarter million reads, Wattpad unceremoniously dumped it. Here it...
