Gone
[Following on from Hurricane the chestnut circus horse recovering from mud fever and dancing with me in the field for a further year... TSM = The Sheep Man]
‘Can we go and see Hurricane?’
It became the first question on the lips of the four sisters, part of a circus family who regularly visited.
And Hurricane would amble across the field leaning his head of the fence to nuzzle, snicker and take small offerings of grass from tiny hands. He was as gentle as Octava (my first childhood horse love) had been with me.
But we all knew he was lonely. He even sought the company of TSM’s small herd of cows during that summer, to my amusement and TSM’s irritation. He will reappear with them briefly as we head towards The Byre.
Until now, no one but my mum, Hurricane and my journal knew what I murmured into his coat every time I greeted him …
‘Horse without a story’.
‘Your family will find you…’
And eventually they did.
During the summer of 2017, the circus booked the Khadikov Jigit Riders from Kazakhstan. They were 5th generation ‘horse whisperers’ who said little and never used a whip. Putting their horses out to grass for a few days before the show began, they discovered Hurricane.
By the time the season ended Hurricane had found his family, was proudly dancing round the ring having been given the new, simpler name: ‘Han’. There’s little to say other than it was perfect. And horrible, requisite and perfect that I happened not to be there when they quietly loaded him up, along with a mare they’d brought down to keep him company for the journey.
My beloved had found his family.
To know your lover has found a new, better life and is free to find better suited lovers, is both heart-warming and heart-breaking.
I honored Hurricane the only way I could, which he would never understand, in what will likely be my favorite narrative poetical.
FOREVER HURRICANE
Pigeons poke about in the manure
still fresh with friendship
low whinnies echo round the field and conjure up
a chestnut horse snorting borrowed bravado
betrayed by sideways dancing
I groomed trust into your rippling flanks
smoothed away your story
nourished your hooves so they could pound freedom –
arcs now shaping furrows in this land
and cantering crescents in my grief-constricted chest
Your gifts – great wordless gifts –
galloped like roller-coasters
into the hearts of anyone patient enough to go the whole way
in the manner of the best friendships: s l o w
It was tousled out of a thousand tiny moments
over that mud-fevered winter
in the painful cleaning of thin and hairless legs
in the sharing of uncertainty
on long Guy Fawkes nights standing side-by-side
while you licked my hand pretending you were searching for some last sweet trace of apple
(I won’t tell)
Hurricane, we loved each other well
Sight is silent here – it’s smell and taste and touch which sing through glistening eyes
waiting for the whinny of friendship
gone now, like long discarded apple cores
and I realize that grief lives in my nostrils –
they can’t find that nose-to-nose
the all of you which sweats no words but ‘horse’
I breathe in hard, past unasked-for tears
to bury the smell of all of you
in some unbounded space which might be
‘Forever Hurricane’ to you and me.
#horse #circus #poetical #love