The Jump Of A Horse

B. T. Joy

            Lorca described metaphor

by using the metaphor

of a jumping horse.

            The spirit he was searching for,

the one I found

reading Blood Wedding in messy rooms,

strewn with cannabis and mint,

that spirit   

required a downward leap.

A swim through genes.

To bathe in DNA.

            He left them behind. 

Homer, Hesiod, Pindar,

Apollonius of Rhodes,

even Virgil’s arms

and the man he sang.

            He left them with their Muses.

            Them

and the saints and angels flanking doors in stone   

through the mausoleum squares of Andalusia. 

            The spirit he was searching for

was in the blood after all.

            Not rock or text.

            Not antique

or yet-to-come.

            Poetry doesn’t happen that way;

in rain or knife or sea or song.

            This knowledge isn’t hard to gain.

            Put your ear against

your own blue veins.

            Hear what Lorca heard.

            The jump of a horse

in every pulse that beats

twice a second beneath your skin.  

B.T. Joy is a Scottish poet living and working in Glasgow. He has published poetry in journals, magazines, anthologies and podcasts worldwide; including in Forward Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Presence, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond and The Newtowner. After receiving his honours degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies in 2009 he went on, in 2012, to receive a PGDE from Strathclyde University and has since taught as a high school English teacher. He is also the author of two volumes of haiku In The Arms Of The Wind (2010) and The Reeds That Tilt The Sky (2011). His haiga have appeared with the World Haiku Association, Haiga Online and Daily Haiga. He was one of six writers nominated for The Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition of 2012; judged by Don Paterson. For further information on writing and publications please visit the writer’s website: http://btj0005uk.wix.com/btjoypoet