For this season the ponies of The Forest wear their thickest coats. Far, far from the clipped, curried finery of fully domestic horses, these coats are multi-layered and beautiful in any of the wide colour variants seen. My favourite view of these beast is on a damp and windy morning as the sun rises behind, creating a haloed silhouette showing the full range of colour, depth and fineness of the hairs. The wind plays through the coats as they turn, leaving tousled furrows that water holds in place.
On frosty mornings this weather protection can hold a layer of ice or even snow, but this morning, cool, overcast with the same clouds that looked like irregular waffles hovering above in the previous sunset, the coats look like warm, shaggy hearth mats, asking to have fingers run through.
It was not the coats that caught my attention this morning so much as the way that the mares are filling them. Broadening bellies suggest the curled life growing there; all head and legs and dizziness for April. A calm melanistic fallow doe joined their steady chewing, at the half way point of my journey. I'd judge in that same state.
It was the steady browsing of these beast that also led me to notice the gorse (not much else is still green except thin grass). Yellow buds cover the tops of the bushes, ready to burst out if the sun should kiss them. Along the more cultivated verges I saw that the daffodils were looking happy again. Heads bobbing where yesterday's frost had them bowing.
No comments:
Post a Comment