Category Archives: lessons on Western Riding

Morning Coffee Notes 24.2.23 ~


On todays menu ~ Spring, Horseshoe Crab, Body/brain Memory According to Horses, This Mornings Repetition and of course  COFFEE!

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Empty bird feeder

Dappled sunlight

Budding trees

I get to notice

Spring

 Again

 ~

Picture 091

 

 

Horseshoe Crabs

 

I think about horseshoe crabs, when child, discovering them.

My friend telling me they were dangerous because the ridge along their sone and tail would cut your foot. And they were poisonous too!

Notwithstanding I forum them fascinating. Would have called them alien but I didn’t have that word you. Extra-terrestrial creatures you know.

Later I heard that they were a creature that had silver blood and were used to discover way to treat leprosy. There were definitely a colour of unseen worlds. Upside down there was bits of orange a more familiar thing. sometimes we’d find small little ones not as intimidating as the adults which were about a foot or so wide. Besides all the little one we ever found were dead. Bleach whitish by the sun, shells thinner than a potato chip.

 Any way I don’t know how much of what I believed as a kid is true. Don’t want to know enough of my childhood has been disproven. So I’m keeping this for my childhood and my friends as if that would keep us walking along the big giant oceans sharing stories and the adventure of comradery.

The Body/Brain memory according to horses.

Has its own memory. Things a brain might rather not know. The body remembers and will act automatic to prevent, or at least try to prevent a reoccurrence of such things.

 I remember getting busted up by a horse. First time thrown, first time in hospital, first broken bone, first collapsed lung a long list of things. All firsts that I wished were nevers.

So after I was discharged from hospital I realised I need a cane, There was no medical reason, But I found whenever I was walking around in public and people got to close I’d flinch and it’d hurt. They weren’t really too close but according to the body’s memory they certainly were, So I carried a wooden cane. Not to menace folk but people generally give a wider berth to a person with a cane.

 

The brain too has its own memories. Maybe sometimes it decides the best way to manipulate what’s happened is to go full throttle out there. To prove to itself and the body too that though a thing happened once doesn’t always mean it will happen again’ Kind of rushing away from what the body remembers and mind does not wish to acknowledge. Apart of something that wants to prove something to its/my self?

So anyway that’s the reason I got back on the horse so to speak. Never rode that other one again. A difference between courage and stupid?

And so that was enough for firsts although my second time in hospital was from being kicked by a horse. That was the first time I lost a spleen and at least I know that can never happen again. 

 “Your spleen looks like smithereens’.” said the surgeon. Needed to be quoted somewhere don’t you think? They wanted to cut my chaps off. That of course did not happen. But that’s another story.

 

This Mornings Repetition

 

If I let these days

Gentle lie falling fallen leaves

Like green leaves

Wind whisper rain through poplar

 How can any one of them be bad?

This is my privilege

To be kind is my honour

These are my vows

Today tonight tomorrow

 To you to me to this whole world.

 

(Repeat daily)

Billy the Kid… from Lessons on Western Riding (draft) by PD Lyons


So here’s the next one from Lessons… Back in 1983ish I did get to travel to what was then West Germany. Spent a January in Hamburg with excursions to Vienna, Lubeck and other winter wonderlands. Then in 1990ish I got to learn how to ride horses. So this poem puts the two worlds together. Hopefully in a way that makes more sense that this pre ramble. cheers.  

 

 

Billy The Kid in Hamburg

 

On the run from what he didn’t know

Brought his six guns, slid down his hat, Night robbing trains by lantern light.

 

Secret señorita homesick for palm trees & tequila

Small stories of her Badlands youth

Explains to him the length of her long legs

And how she knew she’d never have his kids.

 

Down in the Reeperbahn*, softly smoking Cigarettes he didn’t know how to roll, so she did.

As if hot grog and sailors would deter him from whatever treasures he’d go back for.

 

And she’d hear how he’d gone for some golden princess steeple swayed,

Belief in orthodoxy still strong especially when so far away from home

Until eventually surrounded by things even he could not deny,

Wrapped his pistols in dirty laundry packed in a trunk,

Trusted to the stations of trains, fortune of strange ports.

 

Back in the land where he was born.

Severely betrayed, nearly captured on the river

Escaped by some woman so strong she scared him

But from whom he learned to ride –

Life of horses, Long constantly moving horizons,

Real living breathing freedom between his legs.

 

And whoever couldn’t understand his guns, Abide the smell of horses

 Take those chances freely offered, wouldn’t they still love him?

Lead him to parlours, boudoirs, Soft green grassy banks secluded by whatever river –

Until once more his own true nature breaks their law?

 

*Reeperbahn ~ The Reeperbahn (German: [ˈʁeːpɐˌbaːn] (audio speaker iconlisten)) is a street and entertainment district in Hamburg‘s St. Pauli district, one of the two centres of Hamburg’s nightlife (the other being Sternschanze) and also the city’s major red-light district. In German, it is also nicknamed die sündigste Meile (the most sinful mile) and Kiez. The Reeperbahn Festival is among the largest club festivals.

 

 

Poem from unpublished manuscript : Lessons on Western Riding by PD Lyons


This is the first poem from the collection, Lessons on Western Riding by PD Lyons. Many years ago I spent some time working/living/loving with horses. The poems represent the many aspects of that relationship. Selected from poetry written over the past 40 years or so. Hope you find something to like here. My intention is to post the whole manuscript more or less on the blog. Good luck. Bye!

~

occasional it happens

stray song over the kitchen radio

old photo tucked in a book that for no reason I’ve  picked to thumb through

I hardly let it pause me

I usually just keep going

occasional it happens

my old bones do an old ache

glimpse that crooked clavicle in the bathroom mirror

hardly let it pause me

usually just keep going

occasional it happens

strong scent of well-oiled leather maybe someone’s coat

packed tight on the morning train

mists trough the damp windows

shadows moving up the hills

hardly let it pause me

usually just keep going

occasional it happens

but you know sometimes when it does

I just don’t feel like moving

stay right there face the tears

yeah, sometimes I miss the horse days

sometimes I just fucking do

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