“The Eye-MoteBlameless as daylight I stood lookingAt a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,Tails streaming against the greenBackdrop of sycamores. Sun was strikingWhite chapel pinnacles over the roofs,Holding the horses, the clouds, the leavesSteadily rooted though they were all flowingAway to the left like reeds in a seaWhen the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,Needling it dark. Then I was seeingA melding of shapes in a hot rain:Horses warped on the altering green,Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns,Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,Beasts of oasis, a better time.Abrading my lid, the small grain burns:Red cinder around which I myself,Horses, planets and spires revolve.Neither tears nor the easing flushOf eyebaths can unseat the speck:It sticks, and it has stuck a week.I wear the present itch for flesh,Blind to what will be and what was.I dream that I am Oedipus.What I want back is what I wasBefore the bed, before the knife,Before the brooch-pin and the salveFixed me in this parenthesis;Horses fluent in the wind,A place, a time gone out of mind.--written 1959”

“When I can't ride anymore, I shall keep horses as long as I can hobble around with a bucket and a wheelbarrow. When I can't hobble, I shall roll my wheelchair out to the fence of the field where my horses graze and watch them. Whether by wheelbarrow or wheelchair, I will do likewise to keep alive-as long as I can do as best I can-my connection with horses.”

“A great fear came over me, and my body went entirely cold, and I stood as if paralyzed with fear; for I knew that the horse was no earthly horse, but the pale horse that will be sent at the Day of Reckoning, and the rider of it is Death; and it was Death himself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange longing.”

“A horse blanket, Mel?I remembered what I was wearing. 'It tore in half when Hrani tried washing it. She was going to mend it. This piece was too small for a horse, but it was just right for me.'Bran laughed a little unsteadly. 'Mel. A horse blanket.”

“I wondered what I’d end up looking like once I bloomed. I couldn’t even guess. If I had to be stuck in my own skinny, gawky, coltish body forever… well. It probably wouldn’t be so bad.I wouldn’t mind a little more in the chest, though. But wild horses wouldn’t drag that out of me. Ever.”

“He was waiting there for her beside the pool - a great black horse with shoulders like polished ebony and the water still streaming from his mane and tail. Morag stood and looked at him for a long moment. The great horse looked at her and never moved.“Will you trust me?” he had asked her the evening before, and she had trusted him then. She trusted him now, and so she walked towards him. She grasped his mane, and still the black horse never moved. She stood on a stone beside him, swung herself onto his back, and the black horse moved.”