Roping
Poem - by John Grey
At dusk, out rounding up wild horses,
spinning my lasso into
a galloping dust-kicking herd
of red necks and raw nostrils,
I accidently roped a unicorn.
Maybe lonely
and far from its land of myth,
it must have been recruited
by that mob of broncos
and, longing for company of its equine kind,
enlisted in that feral thunder.
No wonder
his was the throat
my loop found in that hard-breathing crowd,
that long white horn
the perfect target
for a whirling noose in fading light.
At the rip of hemp on skin and vein,
he jerked and squealed,
uprooted the soil with stomp after stomp
of those cloven hooves.
More in shock than pain,
more in fright than shock
then more at the mercy of
dashed pride than fright,
he shrieked and thrashed the more
as I pulled him from the pack.
But then instinct took over.
His head began to dwindle,
body dissolve into sparkling lights,
until the last of its dazzling coat
joined the remnants of day
in dark's deep caverns.
My rope fell to the earth.
But his cry held taut,
long after the herd galloped free.