Feeding from a flat hand
For the Ekphrastic poetry Challenge
Summers snap away
with dandelion seeds,
landing like aphids
green on the breeze.
We grew together
on those long days,
notched on our fence posts,
lonely in those corners.
My secrets blown to
pollen clouds,
rising to reach the city;
I miss the muscle
beneath your skin,
the uncertainty in our eyes.
You well capture the sense of penned-up isolation and loneliness of the horse in this picture, and the small boy looks just as lonely and lost in a big (to him), empty-of-others and parched (as you say) landscape. One is confined from the dance of horse freedom and other companions inside the fence, the other offering/asking for mutual empathy, trust and love with an outstretched hand. Your title is intriguing. Flat hand rather than open palm. I’m caught up in trying to decipher the significance. It feels like a submission to where the boy finds himself in his life that… Read more »
Hi Belcanto many thanks for your considered reply, I really appreciate the feedback. you have covered a lot and most of it I am very please it has come across, I can see dandelion seeds green but I just meant the way they are distributed ie not really in control the way we fall through summers when we are children.
I take your points and will have a look, the rising was the child growing and leaving the horse behind.Thanks for the help Keith
Sorry on my rather flippant ‘ you lose me’ . Of course I understood what you meant. Just my way of saying that didn’t work for me as you intended, especially following the cadence and complexity of the lovely image that precedes it.
Hi Keith, I cannot encapsulate all I feel on reading this poem. It could be the boy and his horse? ..it could also be the relationships we treasured in youth, the things we held sacred.. The fear too in the relationship, the giving and taking. As one who has loved horses all my life. Been thrown so many times I discovered how to stay in control.. .However, as a very young girl, I offered grass to a horse with closed hand. The horse chewed my hand so badly I lost the nail. I learned to offer things with a flat… Read more »
Wow thank you Alison, really chuffed by your comments, I have edit this since the original post, so doubly pleased by your comments. Best Keith