Rainhorse Again
The rainhorse is come again
Barrelling up the field
High stepping
Bull-headed, mad-eyed
Smacking stoned mud
Misting earth in air
And I am trapped between treeline and river
In unsuitable shoes
I first met him years ago
Galloping through classrooms
Mud spattering books and faces
Drenching printed pages
With fear of the unknowable
Real frost-edged outness.
Of what is there when we are not
And would never be if we knew
While ponied girls trot lanes
The rainhorse canters worlds
Could clear harmless hedges
Should he so choose.
Stands at the centre of things
Solid as the feral landscape
Holds me with a turn of head
Cannot be bribed with a palmful of grass
And now the soil has mated with his kind
Their offspring my slow death
Spat out into treacherous air.
Toytown tumbleweed spores
Dance a triumphant silent jig.
For my code’s been cracked
This careful order jemmied
With heaven’s exquisite design
Choose up or down. Shall I.
In divers boots I schlop for the river
Clay clogged and waddling
A comedy of stuffed clothes
Cheap string-tangled marionette.
I turn at a feathered sound
The world’s a grey watercolour
I am not the human I was.