Childhood Dreams

When I was a child, horses raced across my consciousness like storm chased clouds. They sprung from my crayons onto a blank pages, horse words filled reams of paper in my exercise books. Every book written about them was worn, read and re-read, stained with dirt from my grubby hands. I schemed, prayed to gods-indeterminate, to have one of my own. On screens of black and white, their images smudged, movement’s jerky, manes and tails flying, hero’s rode into myth. They were magical in an un-magical world. A world of loneliness, an earthquake world, where each step might lead to nothingness, a gray concrete world of uncertainty and pain. The dreams of a little girl who would seek them at fairs and carnivals, where poor ponies stood patiently, look for them along the road during our many moves. Would find them in any town we stayed in, however bleak. Would work all day at a barn just to smell or touch them, joy of joy to be able to ride one. I knew that each one was a safe place to be, to hold all the love I could give, with my arms around their neck my head on their shoulder, not once rejected. Impermanent and fleeting as it was, I knew that they were a safe haven.