The Wednesday Poem

C Y O’Connor’s Horse

The easterlies have breakfasted upon the desert land,
travailed the Darling Ranges and swept the coastal plain,
bush flies catch the thermals to Fremantle’s trodden roads,
their maggots supping middens in the new town by the shore

O’Connor’s horse stood saddled, his stable mate confined,
her rider lies in bed today, the summer heat maligned,
it baked a fever in the street and laid it at her door,
no morning ride with Papa, along the South Beach shore

an engineer of vision, shaping anchorage and groin,
he rode out past his harbour, rubbled stone and berthing bones,
prospectors thirsts unwetted by a slander of discourse,
sceptic’s mocked his pipeline to the goldfields in the north

Noongar sang him madness and white man called him thief,
an engineering masterpiece, defamed and disbelieved,
society rang jeering and it tolled a heavy knell,
dark rhythms in the hoof beats on the fringe of ocean swell

I wonder if he cantered or galloped to that place,
I wonder if the rider paused to glance across the waves,
the early morning bridle track abandoned on the shore,
a single shot all bloodied as the horse threw off his load

in fright he galloped southward, along the shoreline track,
water shining on his flank, blood splatter on his back,
eyes blinded in his startle, death ringing in his ears,
pounding in his gleaming chest, his ears pinned back in fear

he halted in the stillness, grazed scrub along the shore,
discordant shrieks from seagulls, sore weightlessness he wore,
until his reins were taken up, into some passing hands,
retracing frenzied hoof prints, his flight thrashed out in the sand

the sodden corpse discovered, disfigured by its wound,
but still the clothes called out his rank in saturated tones,
O’Connor and his rearing horse, a madness caught in bronze,
rising steed, an unnamed mount, in tides that touch the Swan

Ann Gilchrist

Ann Gilchrist is a diverse writer. She has been published in several Australian and American anthologies and has in the past been a regular performer at Perth Poetry Club. She has assisted in hosting afternoons with tributes to poets ranging from Emily Dickinson to Robert Burns and being involved with International Women’s Day. Ann was a featured poet in the Perth Poetry Festival in 2019 where she held a well attended workshop and also released her first solo publication, ‘Glass Cabbages’, through Mulla Mulla Press.