What the horses see at night

Just a horse with its back to the sea,  looking over a fence. It was one of three and it didn't want to be touched although it accepted some handfuls of fern I plucked for it. Nothing much else to see on another dull and chilly afternoon. I looked for a poem - this takes me ages because it has to be one that feels right to me. (Many poems about horses are sentimental or pompous.) I found this one 10 pages back in my Google search and liked it immediately because I often think of what it must be like to pass the cold hours of darkness out in a field. I had to look up a few words that were unfamiliar to me. 'Drogue' means a funnel- or crescent -shaped parachute device used to slow down an aircraft or a boat as it comes to a halt. Plowt is a Scottish word meaning plunge or plop. To skirr (used by Shakespeare) means to move rapidly with a whirring sound.
It's by a Scottish poet Robin Robertson.


When the day-birds have settled
in their creaking trees,
the doors of the forest open
for the flitting
drift of deer
among the bright croziers
of new ferns
and the legible stars;
foxes stream from the earth;
a tawny owl
sweeps the long meadow.
In a slink of river-light,
the mink’s face
is already slippery with yolk,
and the bay’s
tiny islands are drops
of solder
under a drogue moon.
The sea’s a heavy sleeper,
dreaming in and out with a catch
in each breath, and is not disturbed
by that plowt – the first
in a play of herring, a shoal
silvering open
the sheeted black skin of the sea.
Through the starting rain, the moon
skirrs across the sky dragging
torn shreds of cloud behind.
The fox’s call is red
and ribboned
in the snow’s white shadow.
The horses watch the sea climb
and climb and walk
towards them on the hill,
hear the vole
crying under the alder,
our children
breathing slowly in their beds.