A Victorian Game of Chicken

It was the last time I flew and I cannot
remember it well, or should say I cannot recall
coming down, only the feeling of rising up, warm
horse flesh under thighs, tendons tensed as heels dug
into a firm hot belly, and the moment
when the horse stopped and I continued on alone.
I think I fell as I awoke, flat on starched white
sheets, expecting to find grass beneath me,
a shaft of sun upon my face. I would have picked
myself up, looked quick over my shoulder to see if my reach
for higher hurdles and my lack of success
had been marked by other eyes. Instead, I find
myself landed in a room with gated windows

and four square walls, a room filled with the stilted scent
of flowers grown to be cut, out of sun and wind,
not the wild smell of sunbaked furze and gorse
but some pale English idea of cheer. But these odorless
tea roses and potted plants offer no reassurance, rather
remind me how firmly I am now rooted, everything beneath
my waist wrapped close and tight. Father, mother,
vigilant at my bedside, they will not speak of these things now
but I do not have to ask to know, their eyes as wide
as if the shouted news of my aborted flight and crumpled landing
still echoed off the cold manor stones. When I was a child

my great-grandmother told me amazing stories as I snuggled safe
in her arms in those drafty halls, in an old wing chair,
stories of the women who once fought bare-breasted
side-by-side with their men on the land we now call
meadow, how they rode horses, swinging swords.
Stories of the offerings to god and goddess they made
at the low stone cairn that would someday claim
my much more personal sacrifice. What silly visions did I have
that afternoon, a Victorian lady-child strapped tight
into her riding costume, side-saddled on her mount,
to contemplate behavior so unseemly? I forgot myself
and for that conceit I now lie here pale and flat
upon my linen-dressed shield, without the comfort of a blade
to put a more fitting end to the fact that I am conquered.
Instead, the nurse hands me a spoon and soup made
from the meated bones of birds who never tried to fly.