The Bridle Path

It was the walk we hated, waiting
in wellingtons and regulation sweaters, or, in winter,
belted into dark blue coats, like conscripts,
or trainee prisoners. Mud and frost
conspired underfoot. We marched in pairs
across its dirty demerara.
 
We perspired under aliases, or surnames:
first names were reserved
for frank chats with the vicar, after
infringing the hymnal, or drawing
cartoons on letters home.
 
And two by two, like parodies
of Start-Rite children, we went west, our ringworm caps
clenched to our heads:
down wild, dark aisles, beating the bounds,
the bounds we were out of,
past sheep who stood, gawping, where the pews
should have been.
 
The bridle path: we never saw
a single horse, or heard
the jangle of reins, the rub of a jodhpur, the hint
of a whinny. And so on. We didn’t even
know it had anything to do
with horses at all. Hand in hand,
we did wonder, though, about weddings.
 

Bill Greenwell

in collection, Ringers, 2011, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-9070904-7-9;
highly commended in the Wigtown Poetry Competition 2010