South China Sea Pirate Watch
Fantastic Planet. A Pirate’s Garden.
The South China Sea Pirate Watch is a US Navy submariner custom in which one stands watch bare-butt-naked on the conning tower, scarf tied around your head, dagger clenched in your teeth, while crossing the 120 degree east longitude line. (Source: my husband Dennis did this.)
Our horses are fed, standing together by the pasture gate, heads drooping, eyes half closed, tails swishing, and tonight is awash in indigo. Sitting on my Percheron’s broad back─no halter, bridle, blanket, or lead rope─I feel his coat as plush as any sealskin I can imagine against my legs and seat, warming me against the frisson of purple air, molecules scattering light, the cold, bright wildness of stars beating against the high-desert beach.
He lifts his head, eyes suddenly alert. The others follow.
I press my cheek against his dark neck. Wrap my arms around him. Listen for the muffled roar deep inside his chest, the half-formed words immured in flesh and blood.
We pitch forward and roll, spiraling up up up towards a break in the black and blue pileus clouds, past the crescent moon dangling just above the mountain top. Phosphorescent waves break over the earth’s bow, and the Percheron’s tail is our rudder. Fingers entwined in his coarse jet mane, I glance over my shoulder at the southern sky. There are pirates about.
We are as still as stone, and we are galloping.
We are full of breath, and we are breathless.
We are navigating the waters, and we are lost at sea.
We are locked in the barn, blanketed, fed, lulled to sleep by the amber-lit windows of the ranch house just beyond the gate; and we are free.
Flickr artwork and photos: doggiesarefromheaven; astrocruzan; driestriest
