Horse Latitudes
When they found them,
a cast hook pulling from the depths
an apparently endless iron chain,
it was just another mystery
to marvel at in an ocean
filled with more than enough.
But still the story spread
from ear to ear,
until finally, an old man
in a dockside bar
with a face more wood than skin
heard the tale
and laughted at the fools
who now call themselves sailors.
How could they understand
what they had found
without knowing why it was
they called that part of the Atlantic
by that old, almost forgotten name?
You see, long ago
Spanish Galleons,
filled with soldiers
greedy for the plunder
of the New World,
often found instead
the sickly winds
and Sargasso weeds
of a mariner’s oubliette
a part of the sea that loved
their ships so much it would not let them go.
Finally, near dying of thirst,
they would cast their own stallions
by the hundreds into the sea…
But sometimes, the leather harnesses
and the salt of the sea
might mix in some silent,
unknown alchemy
and the corpses would rise,
some even centuries afterwards,
still chained in great lines,
floating right near the edge
of the sun-dappled surface…
Imagine that, being some fisherman
or deckhand, and looking into the water
for one single instant to see
the bones of Spanish stallions,
somehow in the currents, moving
for an instant in stunning grace,
as if racing in a last charge,
chained to your brethren,
great manes flying,
hooves thundering as if to turn
the very ocean to earth,
in a race with no finish,
for it circles the very world.
by Brandon Whitehead
fromThieves, Pharaohs & Mexican Daredevils
Spartan Press
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