Midsummer White

The ancient one, birthed in another age
beak mouthed, strangely skeletal
peels away from her verdant slope
stutters stonily on tiny hooves
shakes dust from ethereal flanks
nuzzles her impalpable foal

She who once pulled the chariot of the Sun
wakes on this eve of dreams
gallops over hill and vale
bone stone cold creature
looming, outsized, lumpy
she sails over hedgerows
scatters cattle and chickens
sets farm dogs barking
pet dogs to cower

She will break over you like an ocean wave
roll you over and under in your midsummer dreaming
refreshing or drowning, you make your choice, take your chance

Rosy fingered dawn will return her
stiffening to the high slopes
she settles creaking into green
back to the land

For now

Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond

If you stand in the valley near the village of Uffington in Oxfordshire and look up at the high curve of chalk grassland above, you can see an enormous white, abstract stick figure horse cut into the grass. She has a sweeping body, a round eye set in a square head, a beak. and an invisible foal (you’ll have to trust me on that last one).

This is the Uffington White Horse, a 3,000-year-old pictogram visible from 20 miles away.

Once every hundred years the Uffington horse gallops across the sky to be reshod by Wayland in his smithy, just along the Ridgeway track. This is said to have last happened in around 1920. Maybe Wayland waits for her tonight……

This poem was written for the Earthweal Weekly Challenge.