Tuesday, 14 August 2018

Creative Gold





Recently, I began a new Facebook group for Creative Writing to offer assistance to those who would like to write, for those who need encouragement and support, and for established writers who might just need feedback or brainstorming or some new exercises to stimulate the creative juices.


From an exercise I posted, Sarah Waldock came up with this beautiful poem, and has kindly given me permission to share it here. I have called it, simply:


White Horses


White horses crashing and rolling, white horses that rise on the sea
A single black horse gallops onwards, it carries my sweetheart to me
Galloping on through the shallows, galloping over the sand
White horses fret at the edge of the shore where the water is met by the land


The waves shatter hard on the shoreline, the waves being horses no more
But my lover will ride on regardless, riding onwards across the dark shore
He will gallop across the dark causeway, racing the tide as it floods
And when he has reached my lone island his kisses will sing in my blood.


He will gallop across the dark causeway, revealed by the ebb of the tide
And will gather me into his arms once again, and will ne’er more be reft from my side
Together upon my lone island we will hear all the sounds of the sea
And the white horses race o’er the causeway which carries my lover to me


Oh my lover! Please hurry, please hurry, the waves are encroaching too fast
And the white horses play on the causeway, and the safe time for riding is past
I look out from my lonely island, and in the dark waves I can see
Amidst the white horses one black horse’s head, swept away by the herd from the sea.


In the morning the shoreline is quiet, an exhausted black horse on the sand,
And the white horses born of the ocean just shake soft manes at the land
But the man who was recklessly riding is gone now forever below
For defying the horses of Neptune far under the waters that flow


© Sarah Waldock