The Best Australian Poems 6 Nov Written By Todd Turner Horse Bending to the earth, the silhouette of a horse is a hillside, dense as almond wood.From wither to tail, a bristling escarpmentdrops to a levelling range and a broadening flatland, its bare-blank spine, cradles the sprawling horizonand valley depths. At first light, with the long slope of its neck plunging groundward, it stands steaming among the outcrops, thawing with the quartz-stone earth.As the sun lifts, the mist comes quietly,idly avalanching the treetops before draininginto the white void of the morning air.On ironed hooves and crooked stumps, the horse stays grazing, dipping and disappearing into itself. Frostmelt drips from the red-brown furrows of its hidedown into the mud and clover. Blowing in from the tops, the air shifts and stirs; long flanks of light strip shadows from the clay. Dozy, not asleep, the horse sinks further into a wilderness within its skull. How easily it drifts, stooped under such tonnage,poised and unmoved in its thickly-furred, slack frame. Motionless, under half-closed lids it has slipped, as if flown from the bars of an unlocked gate,bolted to the blind spot between its eyes, dawning headlong deep in the dew. Todd Turner
The Best Australian Poems 6 Nov Written By Todd Turner Horse Bending to the earth, the silhouette of a horse is a hillside, dense as almond wood.From wither to tail, a bristling escarpmentdrops to a levelling range and a broadening flatland, its bare-blank spine, cradles the sprawling horizonand valley depths. At first light, with the long slope of its neck plunging groundward, it stands steaming among the outcrops, thawing with the quartz-stone earth.As the sun lifts, the mist comes quietly,idly avalanching the treetops before draininginto the white void of the morning air.On ironed hooves and crooked stumps, the horse stays grazing, dipping and disappearing into itself. Frostmelt drips from the red-brown furrows of its hidedown into the mud and clover. Blowing in from the tops, the air shifts and stirs; long flanks of light strip shadows from the clay. Dozy, not asleep, the horse sinks further into a wilderness within its skull. How easily it drifts, stooped under such tonnage,poised and unmoved in its thickly-furred, slack frame. Motionless, under half-closed lids it has slipped, as if flown from the bars of an unlocked gate,bolted to the blind spot between its eyes, dawning headlong deep in the dew. Todd Turner
