In want of a relaxing countryside walk

I saw a horse today,
nothing strange about it.
Chestnut, with white patches
and the usual four legs,
not even the head and
body of a man.

I never understand why they can’t wear vests,
the centaur, not the horse that would be silly.
A string vest on a horse
makes it look like a haggis.

Alongside the horse,
the tree, an elm, stretched out
with the arms of a woman,
a young woman that made each
wave of a hand her tears
for the face was hidden by bark
and could not show
what was warmed by morning sun.

This was distressing
for if trees suffered as this
then what pain grows
in flowers and grass?

A walk on a summer’s day
is only pleasant and fine
because we never look
for the arms stretching up and out to the sun.

Perhaps, if the chestnut horse
had been strange with a man’s chest
in or out of a vest
I would not have lost
my solitude.

John Alwyine-Mosely is a poet from Bristol, England who is new to poetry but not to faeries or myths. Recent work has also appeared in Stare’s Nest, York Mix, Clear Poetry, Nutshells and Nuggets. Ink, Sweat and Tears, Street Cake, Screech Owl, Abbreviate Journal, The Ground, Aphelion, Uneven Floor,The Lake, Morphrog and Yellow Chair Review.