Benicia Love Poem: MY SISTER THE CENTAUR

MY SISTER THE CENTAUR by Mary Rudge

Grown, your long wild mane of hair
wind-blown,  white arms sun browned,
body gleaming bare to the waist
then molded, joined, in centaur-form
from your long  love of horse,
dead sister, in my dreams we live,
our fantasy.  Two of us
cantering through childhood.
knowing honey-sweet the field flower faces,
streams rippled mix of minnows and sun,
with our herd God made before He
changed design to bodies better fit
to church and pew and choir ( we thought).
We read those books of myth
where centaurs all were men,
but in our young girls-hearts
we felt a horse and human blend
as every day through years we rode.
There must be, still, a few centaurs,
to honor wild, some small herd we
would join! Imaginary! Child!
Reality? Thrown from your horse,
thirteen years old when
you began that long slow death alone:
wheel-chair, hospital bed. In pain,
Three years dying. Sister.
In my mind you ride again,
at one with horse,
In my love,
you ride again:
half horse, half woman grown.
Not dead.