Centaurs

Not yet apparitions, they came to fetch me
through the window. We slipped into the buoyant night
weightlessly, felt some force carrying us
the miles where the stable rose,
cathedral haunted with disembodied snorting.

All I could see were brief clouds
of horses' breath. Only bridles
to steer by, we ascended
bareback into the fields, liquid shapes,
legs fused to ribs, the ground pounding beneath.

We rode until night cracked, horse sweat
mingling with ours, returned again and again
until the soreness in our thighs was gone.
No one ever caught us.
How unreal now, the houses and tarmac,

chains of headlight, most of us
felled by heroes and ecstasies,
or under an extinct constellation.
No memory of returning the horses, gliding home—
only the black chaotic shapes we made.

Copyright © 2007 Stuart Bartow All rights reserved
from Dogwood
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission