Digital Painting by (c) Nin Harris 2010–
I used to fear unicorns would run away from me,
because I had lost the innocence of sunrise-tinted meadows,
the first blush of dawn reflected on billowing white gowns.
Now I roam the marshes, sometimes in watermaiden green,
others in tunics of the deepest, most tragic purple.
Some days I dance for them, in swirling red;
jangling bronze coins around my hips and ankles.
They said unicorns would forsake me.
But they come, through wind, through earth, through water.
Narwhals with their liquid song, draconic solo-hornlings from
the archipelagoes, sparkling lilac gazelles with spiralling ivory,
the dark, stolid obsidian pony from the depths of the Himalayas,
and the dappled mare from the Steppes.
When I curl upon my nest of words, they shed me of every hue
and I am left in billowing white, often tinted with the colour
of my sometime-equine companions, elected to protect
the innocence of my dreams.
(c) Poem by Nin Harris 2011–. All Rights Reserved.