Minny

 

Minny

 

You’d like to suppose,

as you were turning the pages

that once she beheld his black gaze,

the unquiet slumbering of brows,

his fury at being betrayed -

she’d outgrow Minny,

or at least question the name -

because the pony remains

stabled at Thrushcross Grange

of course – but with growing steel

its moniker revealed

as nothing but a snowflake’s fluff,

and any horse worth its salt

should be named for tougher stuff

and its given shoes should throw.

 

Oh, I’m resilient, she insisted

handing in her notice,

chucking in the towel -

and Heathcliff’s scowl

is a scudding cloud

of scorched charcoal

across her simpering glass plate,

solitary, refusing to ride

with those mackerel skies

because they name storms now.

 

You will hang no sign on me

or I will nothing be –

he might have sneered,

if he had a flair for drama,

but no. Listening patiently,

he refused some resignation letter

she might better

have read to mincing Minny,

claiming she’d considered

taking a course of hysterectomy,

all reasons, misgivings, excuses,

for which he had no earthly use

and in any case,

if it were opened

he’d have slammed it shut,

bid her luck, or some such

with a steel face.

 

Had he not the heart

to say they were to hang her anyway

from the hanging tree?

Consign her to history,

only a footnote in a seminal text,

a mistake to correct,

and when they bury him open coffined

next to one who truly left a mark,

he will toss, turn, burn,

tap at the window, 

knock at the door,

visit Cathy’s rose garden - hewn

from that unforgiving moor.