I was only young,
eleven, twelve,
when the old brown horse
turned up on some bombed-out land near home,
its big soft snout snuffling
over the fence searching for sugar.
I lived in a brown town
punctuated by red buses,
not a place for country creatures.
No sweet greens,
just scratchy weedy, unknown things
to graze. No dapples, just
blocks of shade.
Skipping to school with sticky hands
I stopped each day at that wasted land
where the horse shone
and softly took the treat,
then thanked me with a stroke
of his conker coat.
Until we knew each other.
He always waited and watched
at the right o’clock
and greeted me,
delighted,
I named him ‘Horse’.
He knew me as ‘sugar lump girl’
One day the land was waste no more.
The builders came and built some flats
where old Horse once stood
and waited,
waited.