In their Tackroom

Here, heaped from twenty years, so many rugs!
This is the old style, awkward as a quilt.
This, nylon mesh, which kept out June’s cruel flies.
Soft, scarcely used, one scarlet weave for sweat,
grey nets for August’s dust, to shield her eyes.
Some cost more than my coat. They are space-age
green fibre, on which rain beads like a bloom.
Safety clips snap. Our pony, calm with age,
would watch me sew and swear all afternoon.
Mud grains all rugs with winter’s weight, from fields
of bee orchids, which had not felt plough’s lugs,
whose flanks she grazed, we weeded, never owned.
Red hair chokes buckles. Clean. How the chest tugs.
This brush stroked feather, mane’s sweep. Ride your ends.
After us, coats. After the last horse, rugs.

Alison Brackenbury


If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Alison Brackenbury would be pleased to hear them.