TWO INCHES SHORT OF A WINGED HORSE

Hacking home on the lane from Heytesbury to Corton

one late war spring

from a meet with the Wylye Valley Hunt

I saw in the roadside meadow

two bays cantering back and forth

beside the pony I was on

as if to tell him, ‘We’re so much bigger than you –

and then we’re free.’

They beat up drops of reflected sky

from the parallel ditches,

hammered the red bones of last year’s sorrel

while their necks danced

the sinuous dance of liberty to a percussion of hooves and wild farts.

The younger bay, some four years old,

moved like an Arab –

high-stepping trot, almost an amble;

at the canter his legs were steel springs,

were curled pythons preparing to strike.

I stopped at the farmhouse, trailing my reins.

‘Is the gelding for sale?’

The woman nodded, smiling.

‘How much?’

‘Thirty-five pounds.  He’s not broken in.’

I trotted all the way home.

With post office savings and a loan,

he was mine.

For an extra fiver a hand

at the Collins farm broke him in

more or less.

At 14 hands 2 he was just short of a horse.

So wild he needed martingale and pelham,

swift as a gale, wing-chested,

an aristocrat despite his plebeian coat,

there wasn’t another name for him but Pegasus:

no golden bridle – a stiff leather one

from the Warminster saddler – but he had Gorgon blood.

And, like a ten-year-old Bellerophon, I tried

to reach Olympus flying on him.

I also fell, yet often feel I’m once again

on that legendary pony’s back.