Silk Road Passages

Traveler, rest a moment upon your horse’s neck.
Look at your companions through the fluttering of his mane:
Here. There. Gone. Returned.
A thousand journeys, but only one border to cross,
An infinite banner, woven from a single
shared thread.

We are the curtain between two worlds,
lifted, rippled, blown
by winds we do not see and cannot hear
but feel
in the jingling of saddle-cloth bells
in the trailings of the shroud.

We knot our fingers in silver horsehair
and pray not to fall,
yet never grasp
how life solves its mystery in us,
pouring out its gems and spices
to the music of our flutes –
how death rises
in the dust clouds of our journeys,
dissolves into lightness,
and joins our wind-dancing.

Lift your arms. Open your hands.

Invite the world to walk you.

Ours are the needle eyes

all caravan camels

pass through.

Vanessa Wright was that girl who read Cinderella ten times straight, hoping to discover how to turn mice into horses. She became an award-winning author, teacher and the creator of The Literary Horse: When Legends Come to Life exhibit and the Great Books for Horse Lovers blog. Today, she rides and writes from a New Hampshire meadow with her curiously mouse-grey horse, Pegasus.