POEM ~ WHITE STALLIONS OF THE SEA

~ Published 8 October 2016

When I was a young child, before my mother married our stepfather abuser, I remember a picture very similar to this one hanging on the wall of someone’s home, but I don’t remember whose home… one of mother’s friends I guess.  I never forgot how much that painting stirred my soul to the very core.  Staring at it during our visits, I would become totally lost in the “magic beauty” of the scene and I do believe that’s where my extreme love for horses and the sea first originated.
 
When I found this picture on Facebook yesterday (or did it find me?)… oh my goodness, what a delight!  I don’t think it is the same painting I saw as a child, because I’m sure I would know and I’m sure there were more white horses in that original one… but it is still so similar and so very beautiful to me. 
 
For years I searched for a copy of that magnificent painting everywhere… Googling every combination of words in my quest, but I just could not find it!  So I have for the longest time, been saving pictures of white horses that I felt I could use in reconstructing in my own way (if I ever find time again), the painting I once saw when I was a child.  I still want to do that painting one day, but in the meantime, I am so grateful for this one I found on Facebook yesterday and would love to thank the artist who painted it, for blessing and inspiring me (honoring one of my most loved childhood memories) with their beautiful work. 
 
To the artist:  Thank you so much for making me so happy today…
 
Still longing in that memory, at the age of 38 years, I wrote this poem which is one of my personal favorites.
 
WHITE STALLIONS OF THE SEA
© All rights reserved ~ www.pattyskeys.co.za

White stallions rose up from the foaming sea
And galloped toward the shore,
Upon the crest of a wind blown wave,
A magnificent sight they were.
 
They leaped and dived on the driven waves,
They danced upon the breeze,
Their great white manes, flowing behind,
Wild stallions – no one could seize.
 
For these ghostly stallions only appeared
When the moonlight shone on the sea,
And a heavy mist would hide them from view
And keep them a mystery.
 
As they reached the shore, they’d disappear,
As mysteriously as they had been,
In a wild rushing of foam, caressing the shore,
These stallions have never been seen.
 
But every stormy moonlight night,
When the sea is wild and loud,
The stallions appear on the crest of a wave,
Hidden by a misty cloud.
 
(April 18th 1995)
 
~ Pana