THE HORSEMAN AND THE WITCH
Candice James
Copyright 2009
The ghostly horseman, on his champing steed,
Sits silently inside the fomenting fog.
His eyes are fastidiously fixed on the subtle movement
In the bristling bushes at the edge of hell.
Yonder, where the yin and yang of life
Surreptitiously sleep in the cosmic unconscious days to come,
The horseman espies a furtive shadow. Rhiannon!
Somehow, the witch has found him again.
Danger is always lurking in a darkened corner
Of this nightmare he’s been painting
For so many centuries, too many centuries.
His breath catches in his throat.
His steed rears up in immediate alacrity.
The witch’s whispers become thick like the fog,
Dull like the muted thunder of the horse’s hooves
Pounding like leather mallets against the virgin soil
Rhiannon treads upon. She has laid claim to this land,
To this man and his fiendish nightmare.
Rhiannon approaches, strokes his cheek with her icy fingers,
Loving him the only way she know how.
Fiercely, passionately, consumingly with a fire
That burns into his stone cold heart.
Fire and ice he hasn’t felt since their last
Encounter on the moors of Spey.
They fall together inside this cluster of stars,
This ebony heaven of a million eyes
Bearing silent witness to the birth of love,
Death, life, and hatred blended with passion.
Spent, they arise like smoke on the waters of life,
Wisping away with the wind into the sky,
Becoming ghostly specters of a dying dream,
Reborn to a new universe over and over again.
The ghostly horseman digs his spurs into his champing steed.
He gallops away from the fading sound of Rhiannon’s screams.
He will pass this way again. Rhiannon awaits!