ARION

The first time I saw you, you were pacing around my bed. The moonbeams marking the room made evident the silkiness of your black mane. Your kingly air. I was scared – how did a horse get there? How did it climb the stairs? I feigned sleep and from behind my eyelids watched you watch me. You cut a striking silhouette against the floor to ceiling windows, circling my bed with impatience elegantly contained. You smelt of the sea, disconcertingly, and of bales of hay, understandably. I almost didn’t dare breathe. But then you kneeled and rested your head on my thighs and I felt your love infinite. It was a god’s love, a love that tingled the whole and the beyond of my bodily self. I loved you back. Immediately. I couldn’t help myself. Tears of love fell down the sides of my face. And you spoke: I’ve been here from the beginning, my name is Arion, fear not. That’s all you said. I brought my hand to your beloved head and caressed it, feeling its soft intelligent warmth and discovering as I breathed easy now that what blew from the velvet of your tremulous nostrils was sea air, hence the smell, and like this we slept.

ARION

In the morning, in the bright light, you were no longer there, although the weight of your head was still on my legs and the air retained your peculiar scent. Puzzled, I searched for you and came to know that you’re the swiftest of the immortal, winged horses, as well as the most capricious, refusing to be mounted by anyone ever since Adrastus. You’re the son of gods and possess the gift of speech, so it makes sense that you should still be roaming the universe in search of a rider worthy of you 29 centuries later. Time is nothing to you, no es nada. But I digress, really, because all this knowledge came in the after and the wait and what concerns us is the now. Your return.

Here you are, Arion, suddenly in my field of vision, how lovely to catch a glimpse of you mid-flight somewhere. Wait. Let me breathe a bit of your air before you go again. Let me sing like the ancients...

"There is none who could sprint to make it up, nor close you,
nor pass you, no, not if you were riding the great Arion,
the swift horse of Adrastus, whose birth is from the immortals."
               Homer, Iliad, 23. 346.( C8th B.C.)