A Horse, A Hare And A Peach

Words to tear tiny holes in all this madness

Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash

1.

I lean against this wall and conjure up memories to transport me from this place so that I hear their words no more.

I remember powerful arms that lift and throw me, up, up, up until I’m floating, a tiny planet, balanced between gravity and trajectory, neither here nor there, thrown to where weight and time and the certainty of things dissolve and I am caught between soaring and stillness, a child in the air, ecstatic in panic and joy, like a delirious starfish.

Years later, lifted by a mighty swell in the deep turquoise, again I soar, my legs dropping toward the huge depths, my arms floating along the surface as if I’ve fallen into a manhole, vertiginous in this roller-coaster of an ocean, the far off sand dunes and drift wood like foothills and petrified skeletons coming in and out of view as I once again quiver between panic and joy.

I had swum beyond the breakers, far out yonder from safety, rising and falling in the slow motion bounces of a thousand mile swell, to where cold-blooded ocean creatures stalk their prey, out of my depth, holding on like a sustained note on a grand piano, vibrant and eternal, yet momentary.

Wallowing in this oceanic uncertainty, with the hot sun pummeling the land and sea, my tiny insignificant body bobbing like bait, as vulnerable and delirious as a hovering starfish child, I hear a sudden splashing where no splashing should be, and turning I see the slick black head of a horse with eyes of fury, two sharp hooves glassy below the surface, paddling manically as he swam past, transfixed on the horizon.

I think about that horse sometimes, how its incongruity momentarily reshaped the world and exploded my expectations like a piñata birthing new thoughts. I think about the searing relief when the fear of a shark transformed to joyous wonder as this gorgeous horse, its powerful head and shoulders and haunches, sparkling with salty sea water in the pelting sun, nonchalantly swam past. Its deep blackness so beautifully enclosed in the teal and turquoise sea, its body shimmering and lensing like a cartoon under the waterline in the rising and falling swell, determined to follow some feeling deep in his heart.

What would have happened if I had grabbed its mane with my bare wet hands and pulled myself upon its back and rode out to sea, where would it have taken me, that passing opportunity? Because for sure the thought arose, as I floated in that mighty oceanic swell, to slide aboard that horse and ride toward some unknown destination. But I merely watched the horse swim past and chose instead to hover in the precariousness I had found myself, as if that were the safer option, as if by hesitating I would be rescued by powerful hands waiting to catch me when I fall.

2.

Not long ago, we found ourselves, the dog and I, beside a well trodden path. These undulating temperatures on a planet confused by carbon, mean whole seasons can happen in the span of a day. The snow, thawing on a warm spring-like mid-winter day, is tramped down by those forest walkers who keep to the trails, creating milled and hammered trails compressed by footfalls and ski tracks and the domesticated habits of those who will not veer from the path. Then, as the moon rises and the temperature falls, the starlight nights freeze these avenues to slick tongues of glassy ice, transforming supposed safety to lethal uncertainty.

We usually forge our way through uncharted forest so we rarely find ourselves on these trails, but on this early morning we happened upon such a trodden, glistening luge track, and stood to the side, where glancing along the perilous icy artery, we saw a hare sitting in statuesque serenity, smack dab in the middle of ice, seemingly contemplating, or listening, or dreaming, or waiting for I know not what.

The hare twitched an ear and sat as if the Goddess of spring herself were disoriented by the confusion of these bewildering seasons splashing into themselves, nothing being what it once was nor shall it ever be again.

We stared across the wild abyss, the dog and I, toward the hare and the hare stared back, his light brown eyes as deep as my awe, as we all hesitated from the norm, unsettled and adrift in these strange times, held fast by the baffled camaraderie of sudden witnessing.

I nodded, as I always do to the creatures of the forest, and an ancient hunting flame in the dog misread my gesture as a suggestion and took off, intent on chasing down this beautiful creature. I stayed silent and merely watched for there was no need to intervene. The dog, whittled away by domestication, had no chance in this wild race, whilst the hare, full of evolutionary coiling and cunning could outrun my fervent partner without even trying.

But this time the hare did not. Instead, he gently loped a step or two, his ears slightly rotating like radar antennas, and calmly watched as the dog’s four feet hit the lubricant of water upon the frozen ice and each leg went their own separate way, sprawling the dog sideways in a tumbling ball of indignity. Ha!

We shared a momentary glance, this wild and beautiful creature and I, surprisingly risking the open space instead of lurking in its form, usually as still and silent as prey and so rarely as nonchalant and audacious as this one. The hare then shifted and transformed into yet another white bobbing tail disappearing into the distance.

3.

All these words are mere packets of meaning that link into little chains with which we map out the vastness of reality, sculpting the universe, focusing attention, and fencing off everything else.

The ideas and concepts that are birthed into being become our frame of reference. We describe the universe into existence. And sometimes the universe reminds us that we are but projecting a mediocre imitation, a half-witted simulacrum of reality. And when this happens I am reassured, I am awed, I am once again caught between soaring and stillness, once again ecstatic in panic and joy, once more a child. Because the universe we have built with our words is not nearly as beautiful as the universe could be if only we were driven by Love and not driven by fear and ego and greed.

I am back in the room, leaning against the wall and they stand together on the stage, these five speakers, a muckhill of egos spraying out a fantasy of their own making. There just isn’t enough to go around, they say, as the crumbs from their canapés shower from their mouths like tiny constellations of fish roe flashing in the spotlight. They paint a picture of their own victimhood, horrified and hurt that anyone would stand in the way of their overwhelming desire for more and more and more. They sing from a song sheet of meticulously devised lies passed to them from networks of think-tanks, presented as impromptu improvisations, and ripples of applause roll over them so that their conceit, overwhelmed with swagger, encourages them to dig deeper into the depths. It is we that are the victims here, singing more of their ridiculous song, the audience applauding yet fidgeting, impatient for the after-speech mingle where they could pour fountains of champagne down their parched throats.

I am leaning against the wall of the auditorium and thinking of the shimmering horse and the turquoise ocean and the glistening ice and the audacious hare as these crazed so-called business leaders platform their meaty greed as if it were a virtue. And I feel that familiar claustrophobia once more as our universe is diminished by the craven gluttony of these oblivious fools. Our shared symphony of universal beauty reduced to a stupefying jingle endlessly playing in an elevator descending straight down to hell. I think of that beautiful black horse swimming in the great ocean so that I might clamber out of the sandbox of delusional self-importance these people are manically building around me.

Their feckless words conjuring up a world of jeopardy where the powerful reduce the irreducible with their clunky misshapen dreams, a place where they despise all they cannot utilise and cannot understand and cannot even see. As if we were not vulnerable enough, floating in the great balance between life and death, in a momentary sparkling of consciousness, hovering in precariousness, with only each others arms in which to fall.

So I gather my wits about me and leave the auditorium, with yet another tiny smidgen of my soul crushed through witnessing this foolhardy and pitiful display. And I return home having fulfilled my obligation to those who have captured the world, and now pay us all to do their bidding, and I sit and write this because maybe my meager words will tear a tiny hole in all this madness, through which we might reach and grab the manes of horses swimming by and slide upon their glistening backs and ride and ride and ride.

They marched along

humming the song

If we plant

fruit trees

you’ll stuff

your hungry bellies

Then, tottering at

the cliff top

precarious and uncertain

we were persuaded

to push each other off

for a bite of a peach.

But yesterday

almost accidentally

I looked up

and there

was a peach

hovering like the sun

with deep orange flesh

so sweet to the tongue

tempting me

to take the plunge.

But, snatched away

between peachy slurps

I heard him say

ah ah ah arrhh

as he breezed past

my withering bones

Why not plant fruit trees?

I asked

carefully retrieving

discarded peach stones

as he hummed along

to the marching song

with bodies

a-crashing

around him

So

I stepped into the breeze

and fell

softer than you might imagine

this

tumbling through space

as peaceful

as a final breath

and I lay upon this earth

waiting

beyond reach

for horses and hares

to carry me away.