Strange things happened; who knows why?
The wingbeat of a butterfly?
The flutter of a software bug
in programs running Earth and Sky?
The will of God, a cosmic ray,
its impact changing DNA?
A whim, a prayer, a faulty plug,
a blunder or a poker play?

Doesn’t matter, it’s occurred:
a change of places most absurd.
A bundle of supposed joy
was startled to be born unfurred;
like bees as birds, and birds as bees,
and hes as hers and hims as shes,
a horse was born as if a boy
and raised in human families.

He voted ‘neigh’ on ‘learn to talk’
and always used his hands to walk
and never to attack a meal
with proper use of knife and fork.
He whinnied for a mother mare,
but human mother, not aware,
assumed his brain would never heal
and placed the boy in foster care.

The horse-boy went from place to place,
exhausting homes at trotting pace
as so-called carers would perceive
a slowpoke of the human race.
They made him food but never kin,
derisive of the horse within,
till one day when he had to leave
a farming couple took him in.

“His heart is good, if not his head,”
his newfound foster parents said.
By day he’d never cease to roam;
by night he spurned his comfy bed.
With love, despite his skittish way
the farmers vowed to let him stay.
At last he’d found a stable home
and slept in there amongst the hay.

Big hearts, big stables, in due course,
the farm took in a crazy horse
and horse-man (for our boy had grown)
was floored by the attractive force.
He saw that she was not a mare,
but human woman stuck in there
And said, in human pheromone,
“Ma’am, you could ride me anywhere.”

They nuzzled, for she liked him too,
more’n any horse or man she knew.
Despite his foreign horsey smarts
he knew what she’d been going through.
They played till they were giddy
up the hills and through the city.
Mixed-up bodies, linked-up hearts
And shared emotions more than pity.

Strange things happen; who knows why?
The wingbeat of a butterfly?
The flutter of a software bug
in programs running Earth and Sky?
Whatever forces took the rein,
this act of horseplay’s not all pain.
It didn’t pull the final plug
and that’s why it may run again.

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