Foal
The new foal totters on legs
a spider would not care to own.
It doesn’t yet know what legs are for,
nor how to manage them.
Only knows it wants the warm grey bag
beneath the dam,
the hot sweet milk let down,
the tail-wagging thrill.
Its soft lips find the teat and clamp.
It drinks its fill,
then folds its awkward legs
and sinks down in the straw.
The mother gently nuzzles it,
nickers in its furry ear, telling it
of freedom in the grassy fields,
the chance to roll and gallop.
But it sleeps sound, and fields as yet
belong to futures unimaginable.
Gill McEvoy is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her second Cinnamon Press collection is Rise ( 2013.) Gill runs many poetry events in Chester where she lives.