A Funeral For My Horse

1
My horse lies on the sand, bells around his neck.
White lilies and roses cover his coat, there are tiny floating candles,
his eyes like polished stones stare at the movement, unmoving.
Waves embroider black threads back into the water.
‘Can you see the sun?’ he asks me, I say ‘yes I can my dear,’ but the

sun is really high and faraway.
He wants to know if the air is still, just as a breeze illuminates the shifting
dunes.
I tell him that the shape of the land will never change.
No-one will build on his rolling fields.
He whispers that he can hear music, just when the sea grasses sway like
conductors batons, the ocean is keening for my horse.

He asks me to sing for him, so I blow into his ears which pick up cadences of
air while I only hear the roar. He raises his head up slowly and then

as we are talking he lurches to his feet like a foal.
For the first time he speaks to me eloquently about green meadows and river
valleys
arching his muscles, gathering power.

2
I’ll hold a service for him by the sea
return him to the ocean where he came from, the strip of land by the river
Dee, I watch the boats return to Ireland and steal their story.

I’ll invite all the people from our journeys and let them eat buckets of oats and
build sandcastles.

I’ll ask the trees from the wood we spoke to, to come and bring along their
branches to shade us from the sun.

I’ll ask the quiet voices I heard whispering my name
and I’ll ask the Horse and Sun goddesses to leave their carving for a while and
come down to the sea.
I tell my dead horse this and he only blinks his eyes.

3
The beach is awash with invisible movements, little scribbles in the sand where
sun catches the outline of a shape.

The space is full of lovers now, waving goodbye.

4
We wash him, filling our buckets with sea, pouring it over him, rubbing scented
oils into his mane and tail, lavender, wild rose and orange blossom, chosen for
their names and sense of occasion. I braid his tail with red ribbons, folding the
fabric over lock over fabric in a half plait, his mane I lace with ribbons as well,
but decide he looks better with it loose. I trim his forelock and his feathers
neatly, put on his travelling bandages because he is going on a journey but he
tells me sternly to take them off.

He murmurs sleepily with all the attention, his dun coat gleams in the sun as I
body brush it fiercely in wide circles. All of us together on the sand place fresh
flowers gently on his back. I drape the bells around his neck.

And as the sun begins to set we light the candles floating in the rock pools then
stake huge flares in a wide arc around him. They blaze patches of orange onto
the ground.
In the dark quiet of night, at the beach, we sit and watch his body till the
morning. He is as still as the stones and even they rattle when the waves return
them to the shore.
We will return him to where he came from if that is where he wants to go.

In the early hours of the morning he wakes and tells me he is dreaming of an
underwater kingdom, full of beautiful mares and fields of coral.
‘That is your home’ I tell him and he breathes a sigh of relief.
‘I thought I’d never return’ he says.
I stroke his ears and stare out at the black expanse of water and notice the
sharp white of the light buoys guiding the boats into the Mersey channel.

5
Goodbye sing the sand dunes
Goodbye cry the gulls
Goodbye cheer the sunflowers in the fields
Goodbye screech the cooling towers of the oil refineries down river.
now you are gone and the day starts pounding.

6
My horse is dead now and rose from a pyre of sand, threw back his head,
scattering ribbons and flowers, trampling the candles burnt down to the wick,
kicking up dust, whinnying, nostrils flaring, facing the waves, jumping the
shingle and galloping into the sea, sinking finally beneath the foam.
My horse is dead now. Has gone home.