The Colt with the Blaze. The Song of its Short Beautiful Life.

The girl sang her Gaelic song as therapy. Lost and lonely mountains, mists and ancestors.

The colt still unknown, with the blaze, comes eventually out from his mother in darkness covered with a paraffin lamp. A strawed sweet stable smell in rain and strange heat. Both protagonists, one old and crying, one new and weakly first kicking. Pained and shiny, suddenly slipped membranes. Stretching and pulling from a giraffe's legs, then head sleek seal like sealed and shoulders large and bunching, catching difficult. Enough with legs still inside.

A night, short in June with bats and moths attracted by rainbow fluid light. Deep royal blues shining in now four, large paraffin lit whale eyes. A first dark wet thing seen and then a second. The mare is suddenly twice as long. Clearing to breath from blood nostrils. Tearing slippery white grey bag to assist the youngest to take his first breathing alone. Mother rests. Bagged inside and rich filled cable attached. The nose stinging stench of fluids and linked plastic blood vessels drawn across this pat of lung coloured flesh dropped as Mother finally stands. A wonder and a smile on one face, a walk away worried frown on the other. What is he? Seems a strange question.

Pulling free the back legs and causing Mother to, no more resisting, relax. Job done so far. Discover the sex. Chestnut dreams after soft, breathless, pushing. Nothing so much remembered as a flop, a slip, a plastic bag falling out from enlarged parts in almost silence.

Amniotic covered hands that sting in the water bucket. Sweat and sore back in the cold. Wonder and catch in the depth of your being here. Comes a hostage to fate, comes a hole in your heart. Softly.