“Gifthorse”

By Kate Maxwell

Gift horse 

This unexpected offer of hours, days

I would have once called possibility

and begged for its embrace 

like a dazed teen groupie 

ready to kneel and suckle on its glory. 

Time’s former crass dismissal 

of my needs, no object to 

this temporal adoration. 

And once I’d named it master

Time stayed, splaying out 

lazy limbs for me to lay beside

caress the sinews of its constancy.

I stroked and worshipped

ever grateful for its crush 

of frantic rush, its henchmen 

wasting haste with long deliberate 

breath. And revelled in the way 

it tamed that fast-twitch monster

who’d flung me task to task 

from meal to sleep, now silenced

cowered underneath the bed.

So, in the first flush of Time’s 

love it was my only captain. 

But now, my lover bores me.

Stretching vowels, drawing out 

every sentence and pushing me to ponder

not the volumes waiting on the shelf

nor the ever-changing colours of the sky

the hum of a quiet Autumn day

but the chafing patches on my elbows

an Internet quiz on ‘Who I’d be 

If I was a Hollywood Star’

and how to bake a loaf of bread 

from tending stinking mould. 

I could, do so many other things

with my blank boring lover 

but sadly, Time and I 

are not on speaking terms

and I will squander it, just for spite.

Kate Maxwell is yet another teacher with writing aspirations. She’s been published and awarded in Australian and International literary magazines such as The Chopping Blog, Hecate, Blood and Bourbon, fourW, and Social Alternatives. Kate’s interests include film, wine, and sleeping. Her first poetry anthology, to be published with Interactive Publications, Brisbane is forthcoming in 2021. She can be found at https://kateswritingplace.com/publications/