Dream Maverick

Some harness their beds to piebald steeds,
plodding cobs, workaday drays,
others to spangled roans,
spindled foals, dappled greys.
She rounds up the wilding beasts
of the straggling day,

herds them steam-flanked
through the twilight hour,
a stamping tattoo of stars, blazes,
comet tails and streaming manes,
whinnying a brumey mist,
over night’s gathering corral.

An albino moon rears up,
reveals the white of its rolling eye,
the quicksilver of its nature.
She spurs the spuming horses to a prance,
a leap, a Lipizzaner dance
of the wildest dreams,

tacks the spooked, unbroken mares,
straddles the demon stallions,
races bareback all the mustang night,
through sleep’s unbridled prairie,
until a golden palomino dawn,
leads them meek and muzzle-warm
to the sugared palm of mastery.

Stella Wulf lives in South West France. Her work has appeared in The Screech Owl, Prolebooks, The Stare’s Nest and Message in a Bottle. In 2012 she won third place in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition. She is currently studying towards an MA in Creative Writing with Lancaster University. She is also an artist and her work can be seen on her website http://www.stellawulf.com