My Grandmother Remembers the Horsemen

 

They rode in. Looking for men.

Cutting hanks of yarn with their swords

to find horses. Breaking dishes.

It was always wartime there.

 

Retreating, one said in their language

let’s take the girl.

Great-grandmother smashed the lamp,

pulled her into the dark fields.

 

An old woman with three sons,

in a rich country,

she’d watch cowboy movies on television

and tell me—

Miss America, she called me:

They rode like that. They would dance

in the saddle.

 

                    --------Arlene Weiner

 

Arlene Weiner is the author of Escape Velocity, published by Ragged Sky Press. Weiner is a member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and U.S. 1 Poets' Cooperative, Her poems have appeared in Louisville Review; Pleiades, a Journal of New Writing; Poet Lore; U.S. 1 Newsweekly; and U.S. 1 Worksheets; and on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

 

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content © - Arlene Weiner

Music: © - H P Chourasia

Image Source - http://saindarfur.org/darfur_photos/