Riding through England.

A Confounded letter of what I am.

 

I can feel the shape of the earth through her legs, through my back. I can see the high travelling sky above. She is ridden calm through leaf faded green places and we are wishing along with my tuneless whistling. We are come late to our wild walking.

Leaning deep down into hills and lumpy black barrows. Through the light of a forsaken history. The music blood of our England. The evening of an elder world.

We pass an ancient machine cut hedge sharp in its complete agricultural destruction. With Squirrels that chat chatter at each other and at us in turn. Insinuating themselves across the branches in green dark lanes. Sounds of alarm fall away from fright tightened birds. Leading with apparent broken wing away from naked pink blue bulge eyed young.

Hangers of wildlife beech shadow fight both with each other and the evening misted trees held against the whispered day. Telling trails of feathered sighing sink into a failed stone ivy mill and its stilled flow.

We are following the fields of crop yellow, catching our eye, flecked as in evening lit water. We appear over particoloured hills, shadows long behind us. Black painted onto walls and fences with right angled sharpness cutting through both old wood and even older stone.

There is the comedy masque in a crowded farmyard; its actors spitting, sprinting, hopping, flowing apart and calling tantrums to a large, beautiful and bemused chestnut audience. She is velvet deep eyed and always did, whatever, know how and why.

A punctuated gate is hanging onto its useful life with only memories of weary disabled care.

There is a reflected leaded window opening into the inside evening flame and a moth flared suicide. A nail rubber hinged cobwebbed door swings absently. Behind there are glimpses of a motley pied dog foolishly squirming in esctatic loves before its frantic barking echoes down dark, lamp lit corridors. It knows the time wisely and never forgets.

There are lighted window flashes from a table set for a single secret meal. Beginning and ending with the one alone. Loves there that resonate with what was once forever.  Inside glimpses of broken guns for cleaning on bright red rugs and travelling trunks looming still large beneath single meal tables. There are places and partnerships that are sometimes still viable in the shadows from yellow aged hissing lamps.

You can lift your eye to forgotten son's and country bright daughters. Weaned crying and gone from small faded world dead relationships. Ridden away through dreams of an English musical country that never was towards an amber landscape that will never be. Not now in the dead of a ringing fox barking almost night nor then in the crisp break of a bright new morning.

Watch your chestnut gold beautiful mare mixed in this English forever sunset and with you. Centaur skylined across the graded blue sky above the streaked gold.  A mixture of alone but not lonely. 

A shadowed sadly forgetting canter brings you at last along your own reflective pathways, lined deep in memory, following the failing false light to a final home.

Author's Note

My horse was called Autmn. The photograph is Mooey, her son. Again punctuation is intended.

Reviews

[Ken Simm.]

Beautiful Ken, you discribe the world so nice through her eyes... you knew your mare well, and she you, now Mooey, is there, to step in her footsteps, this was another painting of beauty, and the bond, that still is there... (it shall never fade away) for horses are as intelligent as people... I enjoyed the two through your words... thank you.

- Elisa

[Ken Simm.]

You say the nicest things Elisa. Thank you so much.

You're so welcome my friend, your quill just touches.

[Leslie Philibert]

This is a really fine piece of work, full of good observations, and it fits well into a long tradition in England of writing about the countryside ( William Cobbett, maybe ),or the Lake poets. What I like is the way is that the imagery is not enigmatic, but fits exactly the transported message, great write that makes me feel homesick as I sit here in my castle in the Alps..... (the last line is not to be taken seriously ! )

[Ken Simm.]

In Bavaria and he feels homesick..... Not something I can appreciate that :). I hate those little signs like the one I put at the end of the last sentence but I hoped you would not take it also too seriously.

[emmajoy]

Sitting here, shaking my head .. am always so befuddled by your writing, not in a negative way, but, because your sense of time and place and the ability to describe it is both unique and incredible. Your eyes see, your mind feels.. and you carry your readers along, word after word, just as Autumn carried you.

' Watch your chestnut gold beautiful mare mixed in this English forever sunset and with you. Centaur skylined across the graded blue sky above the streaked gold. A mixture of alone but not lonely.

A shadowed sadly forgetting canter brings you at last along your own reflective pathways, lined deep in memory, following the failing false light to a final home.'

Sighhh.

[EMF]

Ken I keep seeing this pop up as being edited, but trust me, this time you've cracked it. It is a pitch perfect prose poem. A superb example of how to create a story from the simplest of moments and emotions. You've brought the image and feeling to life. Wonderful job.

[FJ Davis]

With your unparalleled descriptive gift, Ken, you showed us an amazing ride.
But then, amazing poetic rides appear to be just another day at the verbal stable, for you.
Wonderful!

[Diane]

I just feel as though I journeyed with you..x

[roarke]

oh, this is much more than just riding through England. I had to read it again, because you can't reads this quickly, it's arresting, forces the reader to BE there, feel it, as the spirit and emotion leads. Mythology is like this.

[Donald Meikle]

Hell of a moody ride Ken, trotty in places and a smoother ending than expected.

[Ed Hart]

you are a magician, whatever you touch reflects the wonder of the world

[Emily B]

it was a wonderful excursion . . . good to feel the sun on my back, the horse is gaited nicely too

[Ken Simm.]

It was good to go hacking Autie again.