Heidi Garnett has been published in a variety of literary magazines
including CV2, Event, New Quarterly and Room. In 2007 she placed
in the top three in The Antigonish Review's Great Blue Heron
and Arc's Poem of the Year contests. She was short listed again
in Arc 2008 and included in Rocksalt. She is presently
attending UBC in the MFA program.
Her first book of poetry Phosphorus
was published by Thistledown
in 2006.
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©
2009 Heidi Garnett
A Horse Named Moose
The green of just mowed mornings,
thud of hooves on clay, kindness of English saddles,
the rise and fall of rider meeting horse
half way, the good, good work of asking,
asking with legs and hands, asking please
turn right or left, or break from trot to canter
for you could easily run away with me
or throw me off your back. You could easily
clear these fences, lower than those you leapt
yesterday when asked, just asked,
your mahogany neck and head dropping
into my young hands which made promises,
promises I tried to keep. I tried. I try.
Believe me. I try to hold you softly, thankfully
in my memory, to hold you with loose reins,
your velvet lips barely grazing life's palm
when you fearlessly took what was offered;
this giving and taking which comforts me now
I'm older, the black knife of your mane
slicing the sky to ribbons when you fell
to the ground. I often dream we're flying
toward the Horse Latitudes to pay the stipend
for all horses who gallop at the bottom of the sea,
those lovely creatures who pound with their feet
at the hulls of our sleep and drown
before we can wake and save them.
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