On Aether's Favorite Horse by Theresa C. Newbill
They frolic eight thousand feet above air
sailing the east winds on the back of Aether's
favorite horse.
Whizzing over plains to foothills, they dance
through a breeze whispered by the sea above
the devotions of silver waters.
Coolness turns its path into a shadow where
a gull hovers over pastoral tranquility stained
like flecks of paper, under water, under sky.
Tonight they will traipse the moon with impish
bare feet, haunted by the whiff and tang of fresh
rosemary.
They will smear the phosphor runways and bubble
their way through covens of puckered-up lupine,
waiting to be kissed.
Scents of complex music, jiggle and chink as they
navigate through flattened earth and chain-link
fences leaving trails of yellow feet stained with
dandelion-smudge.
Together they will land back at the picnic grounds
where their imagination once took flight under the
minarets of the iron-oxidized sun.
Together they will eat chicken and tally the bones
as marshmallow trickles down from their lips. And
as the children that they are, they will remember that
the same loneliness that closes our hearts, opens us
again.
