August 2009 Poem Contest

Magic in Silver Stallion Valley by SNGG & Snow  White Glitter Girl  age 11

Thundering hooves,
The dust on the Horizon.
I feel it all
Surge through me,
As if I am one
With them
As the ancient American
Indians were
With every living and
Unliving Particle.
The earth I stand on
Trembles; it vibrates.
I now know the meaning
Of the word Overwhelmed
For that is what my sleepy,
Half-awake self
Feels in my beating heart.
Being here,
Being part of it All,
Excites me, and I bite my lip.
The ground feels
As if a great
Flood of water were
To come and
Rejuvenate me
But no, it is
Only the Glorious sound
Of a herd of wild, migrating, free,
Stampeding,
Horses.
Burning in the one o’clock sun,
Arms dangling loosely at my side,
Being motionless, molding into the
Hills around me,
It is
The most exciting, most unexplainable
Feeling I have ever
Felt in my young, innocent life.
It is only my eyes,
Which try to follow their every
Move, it is only
They which are active.
I am paralyzed in place,
In a good, exhilarating way.
Standing there,
Atop the cliff,
I gaze at the rolling, running
Twenty, or is it forty?
Spinning, beautiful
Mares
And then at their one handsome,
whirling, silver,
Stallion.
Suddenly, with a sudden burst of speed,
As if they had come from a slow-motion movie,
They rush by underneath me, their manes
Whipping back and forth like
Silk in a fair wind,
Their long, sure legs,
Pounding into the dust as gracefully as it could ever be done,
Their echoing neighs and whinnies
Filling the crevices of my ears
And creeping into my subconscious
Are like violins and drums
And cellos and trumpets
All announcing the coronation of a just, new king.
They gallop on until
All my naked eye can see is a ribbon, a plume,
Of dust in the distance,
Following in their thundering wake,
And just like that, it is over.
I hear a voice come out of nowhere,
A whisper in the wind,
Soft and low and mellow.
“You, too?”
I turn slowly.
It is a dark-haired,
Blue-eyed boy,
Eleven freckles tumbling across his sun-burnt
Nose.
I need not question what he has asked,
For it is written in his sky-blue eyes,
It is made clear in his laughing expression,
In his gesture,
In the way his right arm is
Folded back,
Seeking safeness
And snugness,
And in the way his other hand reaches
Out to me, a lonely soul reaching
Out to another,
And his grin reminds me of a day at the beach,
Colorful and dazzling like the sequins from
The boardwalk fortune-tellers,
Cool and quiet like the lulling
Waves kissing the shore,
Inviting like the popsicles
The balding man hands out
With a grin.
So I only smile
And nod,
And then turn and strain to
See the remnants
Of the presence of the wild herd,
But now they are gone,
Passed like a dream in the night,
Magic in Silver Stallion Valley.