Spring Hail

We had huddled together a long time in the shed in the scent of vanished corn and wild bush birds, and then the hammering faltered, and the torn cobwebs ceased their quivering and hung still from the nested rafters. We became uneasy at the silence that grew about us, and came out. The beaded violence had ceased. Fresh-minted hills smoked, and the heavens swirled and blew away. The paddocks were endless again, and all around leaves lay beneath their trees, and cakes of moss. Sheep trotted and propped, and shook out ice from their wool. The hard blue highway that had carried us there fumed as we crossed it, and the hail I scooped from underfoot still bore the taste of sky and hurt my teeth, and crackled as we walked. This is for spring and hail, that you may remember a boy long ago, and a pony that could fly. With the creak and stop of a gate, we started to trespass: my pony bent his head and drank up grass while I ate ice, and wandered, and ate ice. There was a peach tree growing wild by a bank and under it and round, sweet dented fruit weeping pale juice amongst hail-shotten leaves, and this I picked up and ate till I was filled. I sat on a log then, listening with my skin to the secret feast of the sun, to the long wet worms at work in the earth, and, deeper down, the stones beneath the earth, uneasy that their sleep should be troubled by dreams of water soaking down, and I heard with my ears the creek on its bed of mould moving and passing with a mothering sound. This is for spring and hail, that you may remember a boy long ago on a pony that could fly. My pony came up then and stood by me, waiting to be gone. The sky was now spotless from dome to earth, and balanced there on the cutting-edge of mountains. It was time to leap to the saddle and go, a thunderbolt whirling sheep and saplings behind, and the rearing fence that we took at a bound, and the old, abandoned shed forgotten behind, and the paddock forgotten behind. Time to shatter peace and lean into spring as into a battering wind, and be rapidly gone. It was time, high time, the highest and only time to stand in the stirrups and shout out, blind with wind for the height and clatter of ridges to be topped and the racing downward after through the lands of floating green and bridges and flickering trees. It was time, as never again it was time to pull the bridle up, so the racketing hooves fell silent as we ascended from the hill above the farms, far up to where the hail formed and hung weightless in the upper air, charting the birdless winds with silver roads for us to follow and be utterly gone. This is for spring and hail, that you may remember a boy and a pony long ago who could fly.