Written for Hugh

WE WALK DOWN TO THE HORSES

We walk down to the horses
down darkening, leafless lanes to the five horses
silently, faithfully waiting for us.
It’s all they do in winter, this marking time,
patient under the spinning stars
till morning or blue evening.
On far-off hills, lights wink on in houses.
Lampposts, strung along the swoop
of distant roads, blossom yellow and white.
It’s almost owl-time.

You judge the horses’ breathing, their eyes,
their ribs and hooves. You run an expert hand
over smooth flanks and warm necks.
Reassured by you, they settle to their feed.
Evening creeps closer, stealing shadows,
sharpening blackbirds’ summoning calls,
and we leave them to their secret lives.

We walk back from the horses.
Sometimes I take your arm and we talk.
Often we move silently, in parallel,
along tracks deep in mid-winter mud.
Your tolerance, your generosity, show
in many ways. Turning as we leave the mares,
you let me carry the empty bucket.

My mother was too sad and too ill to play her violin for us when we were little. But before we were born she played in an orchestra - a youth orchestra, I think - at the CRYSTAL PALACE, when it really was a palace of glass. She was there, newly engaged to my father, when it burned down.

Little is needed for this:
merino shearings,
coaxed to rovings,
and soap and water.
Not sweat, not
the early way.

As I roll it and pound it
and shock it
I consider this:
felt has a memory.
How far?
How far back?

Back to the carding
and combing, the teasing,
the small metal teeth?
Back to the beast's back,
the Outback, under the sun,
dozing under the stars?

Or further still, to Persia,
to Kirghizstan? Back to the tribes,
to the wandering Turkmen,
needled, embroidered,
hung and handled
in tents and bazaars?

Heart-felt: felt's memory,
felt's gift for forgiving,
for always returning
to what it was, the shape
I made of it.

I bend to my ancient task.

We were taught that the word
was the thing, became it.
The shape on the page,
the sound in the ear,
was the thing itself.

Say 'salsa' and there's the throb,
the swoop. Say 'flamenco'
to hear hard heels,
the authentic wail. A light
lifting of the tongue and 'ballet'
steps forward with pointed toe.

She's two ('and three-quarters!')
and she knows otherwise.
She's learning clay's wordless
secrets by poking and shaping,
tasting and thumping,
declaring her intention
to make a sunflower.

Music from the radio intrudes.
Head tilted, she pauses
to listen and is pulled away
by sound. Raising arms
dark with clay, bowing,
bending, leaning back
in a perilous arc to shape
her body to her mind's
picture, she becomes
Odette by the lake.

She says she's dancing with clay.
She's the swan, the flower,
the baby sister, her pink shoes,
Bach, and 'everything beautiful'.