Warden Hill

 In the last year, it seems like many horses have been lost  to illness, old age, or accident.  Some have been  owned by friends, some by acquaintances, and some by people I know of, but don't really know. Each time my heart has ached, because I have an inkling what the owners are going through. I know I'll be there at some point. We all will have to say goodbye someday.

Then last night someone posted to the Dressage list on COTH that they had lost their heart-horse. I don' t know what made me think of it, but years ago, in the seventies,  The Chronicle of the Horse used to publish poetry.  I remembered saving one particular poem in a journal I kept in high school. I dug through my bookshelves and found my journal and the poem. As I re-read it for the first time in years, I cried.   It is a wonderful poem and I wish I had known the writer. I did find an obit for someone by that name who was a poet and foxhunter. Wonder if that was her...

Warden Hill

A packet of poppies for Warden
Poppies are flowers for forgetting,
aren't they?
Rosemary remembers, they say.
Warden, I will plant a bouquet
of both kinds.

You never liked light flowers moving
in any sort of wind.
Warden, it's
all right.
These poppies are not white.
They will grow only fetlock height.

Remember:
The rosemary seeds I plant for you
will grow too gray, too stiff for wind.
Never mind.
Sleep welll.
I will grow you a warm farewell
of poppies and of good spice smell
Warden Hill,
Sleep well.

Lynn Stefenhagen