M.A. Griffiths

Kelpie

The head is always a horse’s head, heaved huge against your own.
One risen from the sea, dark as depths that squeeze light shut.
Its neck streams against night, an arc arrowing to the rafters

of the sky. On those filaments, you can rise, abandon heavy earth,
hear flint farewells struck by metal, see sparks spit fat as stars
as journey’s wake kicks backwards, a jet hurling you out into ever.

Green eyes, great head, heat against your face, hooves hammering
distance into stone, tamping it, trampling time like meadow and nothing
to fear, nothing, only ocean far ahead, the broad path moons pave,

and on the other shore, and on the other shore, sure.





Margaret Ann Griffiths (1947-2009) was born and raised in London and later moved to Poole. Rather than seek publication through traditional channels, she was content to share her work with fellow poets on various Internet forums. Also known by the Internet pseudonyms “Grasshopper” and “Maz”, she began posting her poetry online in 2001. She suffered for years from a stomach ailment which eventually proved fatal in July 2009. Almost immediately after her death was announced on Eratosphere, poets from all over the English-speaking world collected her work. First published by Arrowhead Press in the UK (January, 2011), Grasshopper: the Poetry of M.A. Griffiths was reprinted and distributed in the USA and Canada by Able Muse Press (April, 2011).