Once there were ponies
In a field beside the road
that I took once a week
to mend my aching mind.
One pony was brown
the other was white
and I worried about them
placidly grazing under falling snow
or thirsting in summer’s brutality.
My talisman ponies
were there through most of it all,
a constant in my upside-down world,
Even when new strangers
bought and transformed the house
that was never really mine.
It was gradual
The grass turning to tall weeds
nearly obscuring the view
of the slowly splintering aged wooden fence.
The ponies became harder to glimpse
but just knowing they were there
gave a symmetry to my madness.
In such small increments
My comfort and the ponies’ field eroded
until finally I noticed
on my way to my weekly visits to nightmareland
that the ponies were simply
gone.
Once there were ponies
and now the field is wild and empty
As tumbledown as my weary soul
devoid of hooves and hopes.
So many have left too soon
Too many have drifted off the edges of my world
But it wasn’t until I realized
the ponies had vanished
that my own last fences crumbled
and I finally wept.
Once there were ponies...
melody ziff