WORDS ON THE HORIZON

THE HORSE GALLOPS

I enter an independent woman's domicile,
a home without her own name plate but governed by her presence.
A close kindred,
within months she has refurbished her borders,
borders whitened by widowhood

She has amassed it all
An identity
An organization
An authorial finger over advancing years.
All her resources and self aware reserves have been well fed,
well utilized by her,
good for her that she has turned reserved borders around
and commanded her own broad center.
Even then felicitous enough not to replace her father in law's name plate or supplant it with her own block letters.

The one image that illuminates her tidy front room,
settles for visionary appeal is the galloping horse portrait,
the grand manes and stance within pinched frames.
The horse that gallops in an inert time and space,
an occupant of this living place.

Under its flight,
I remember reality cracked its whips.
On her silver anniversary gathering, some catapult hit at the facts of life.
Like two distant flames,
man and wife refused to truly bow to the occasion
So far away were they,a dozen eyes and lousy murmurs caught a hint.
Observations pinched sides as little morsels of celebratory cake,
that they exchanged bred unease on their faces,
unease bred indulgences.
Like eyes of thieves,
all courtesies became robbed formalities.

I remember that intensity,
the awkward quiet of that day
as well as the horse's gallop.
The tag of chastisement and embarrassed distance
A badge of stoicism has vanished,
Space and time have bred deliverance.
The man swallowed his bottle of circles all in one go,
and neglected his health,
falsifying his science.

The woman carried herself with restraint,
maintaining the last vestige of his surname.
How or if they shared the blame for their collapse,
or the yellow smiles and graceless punctuations of that silver year.

I have never noticed her looking at that horse in the frame,
as if its colours were once put by either of their hands,
if such a resigned estrangement can be.

The horse gallops,
inert in time and space,
the living room's crowning glory where sombre pleasantries are all that remains.
......................................................

      # the above painting is by the legendary painter M. F Hussain. It is not the horse portrait mentioned in the poem.