Spoiler! :
Some of the lines are a little clumsy and need refined I know, but I swear if I look at it one more time my brain will dribble out of my ears. One thing that is really bothering me is the last line. I don't think it's definitive enough, but I'll let you be the judge of that.The Breaking of the Black Mare
With a casual flick of her burnished hinds
The next hopeful-tamer came tumbling down.
Suddenly the summer air was hazy with curses.
Amongst her snorts of triumph as she faded,
Dissolving deep into the sluggish heat,
Fleshy nostrils flaring against the stir.
One called her the Dark Lady,
But the others said she was anything but mannerly;
Barn sour, brazen, little else than a nag.
The lunge rope is brought out, a hangman’s noose,
Shaken out on the ground until the clip glinted
Like a hard gold tooth, snagging on the grass.
So began her primeval dance,
Her thrumming hoof-beats the steady heartbeat
Of a language long forgotten in this world,
Of liberty, beauty and ecstasy unbridled
So fast-faded and worn out to her now.
Turning on the far side in the tightest of circles
She revolves around the rough leather hands,
The wrench of the rope. This was her world now.
At first she moves with a smooth, supple roll
Of easy shoulders, fluid as poetry
The warm darkness of her eyes bright
Against the strain, but between her terse breaths
And the forks in her sweat, the cracks begin to show.
The first months were hard, the next harder still.
The days blend together. It is all the same.
The spur goads her going, the bit bids her stop,
Pulling her soft mouth to an angled grimace.
Her dark body reared against the friction
Between two battling wills of man and horse.
A black halo of forelock crests her head,
And a shriek builds in her burnt throat
As if a strangled cry to Epona. No more,
And then there was no more. She stopped
And her rider spurred hard. Slowly tired bones
Stretched across the hard pressed earth,
Solemn as a hearse. Her fringed lids flickered
And the infinite gloom underneath drank the world in;
A monochrome world of cracked leather and steel.
With a casual flick of her burnished hinds
The next hopeful-tamer came tumbling down.
Suddenly the summer air was hazy with curses.
Amongst her snorts of triumph as she faded,
Dissolving deep into the sluggish heat,
Fleshy nostrils flaring against the stir.
One called her the Dark Lady,
But the others said she was anything but mannerly;
Barn sour, brazen, little else than a nag.
The lunge rope is brought out, a hangman’s noose,
Shaken out on the ground until the clip glinted
Like a hard gold tooth, snagging on the grass.
So began her primeval dance,
Her thrumming hoof-beats the steady heartbeat
Of a language long forgotten in this world,
Of liberty, beauty and ecstasy unbridled
So fast-faded and worn out to her now.
Turning on the far side in the tightest of circles
She revolves around the rough leather hands,
The wrench of the rope. This was her world now.
At first she moves with a smooth, supple roll
Of easy shoulders, fluid as poetry
The warm darkness of her eyes bright
Against the strain, but between her terse breaths
And the forks in her sweat, the cracks begin to show.
The first months were hard, the next harder still.
The days blend together. It is all the same.
The spur goads her going, the bit bids her stop,
Pulling her soft mouth to an angled grimace.
Her dark body reared against the friction
Between two battling wills of man and horse.
A black halo of forelock crests her head,
And a shriek builds in her burnt throat
As if a strangled cry to Epona. No more,
And then there was no more. She stopped
And her rider spurred hard. Slowly tired bones
Stretched across the hard pressed earth,
Solemn as a hearse. Her fringed lids flickered
And the infinite gloom underneath drank the world in;
A monochrome world of cracked leather and steel.
.
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