Featured Poem

Night Riders

Carol Hamilton

There is something mad

about a rocking horse.

My children's had slick plastic

and thick springs that sent them

flying over dream fields, away,

away from our haunted Ohio house

even as I read D. H. Lawrence's

short story of doom beneath them.

On and on they went …soon discovered

that the distance never shortened

despite all their hard riding.

That red shingled house set in the woods,

a Sears Roebuck prefabricated home

from 1910, that house creaked

at the stairway's landing,

 never quite put together right.

I loved it despite all of its sorrows.

We left that house and the horse

behind forever. We rode far enough,

fast enough, hard enough to escape

at last the voices there

that would not be stilled.

Originally appeared in Coneflower Cafe, Spring 2024.