My courageous and loving patients continue to inspire my writing even all these years later. My poem “Pegasus” about two people who continue to help me understand all the facets of love. I wrote it during my classes at Heron Hills Horse farm last year. “Pegasus” is included in the online ‘myths and legends’ issue of The Gentian literary journal. Such a powerful theme. You can read all the beautiful work at https://thegentian.wordpress.com/issue-23-myths-and-legends/
My poem is below:
Pegasus
for Dawn
Your limbs no longer move
but your tongue and lips are free
as you tell me, while I bandage
your wounds, flush the line
that delivers morphine,
how you used to ride bareback.
The man beside you, beside me,
offers his empty hands
as if to hold back the shadow
of a stalking horse. You named
your first ride Pegasus.
You remember him now
as the story of your life
when it was ordinary magic
before disease ate the sheaths
covering your muscles. Pegasus
is in the sky’s stable now created
from a square of starlight, ridden
by the asterism of a hero who
was meant to save a cursed girl,
but could not rescue even himself.
On clear autumn nights, your husband
carries you outside. Together
you lay on a blanket in a field
domed by hope with no cure.
You count satellites and meteors
until you feel wings rowing
from strong shoulders, feathers
brushing your bent knees.