Rachel Bush

Thought Horses

Some things to think of between 4.30 and 6.30 are:
The sleeping computer, how its green eye opens and closes.
Then how the heels of shoes can be stacked and steep and you will
never wear them or buy them or desire them.
So you remember the small woman with glittery eyes who said
outside Dick Smith’s, ‘Your shoes look like you’re going tramping.’
Then the friend who is worried because maybe the growth is back
again.
You lie as if you take savasana in yoga, your feet apart, your palms
facing up so that your shoulders are spread, your fingers curled. You
will let go of your thoughts, just concentrate on your breathing as if
you watch someone else breathe in and out.
Another woman who is sick will have a hysterectomy on 13 June and
you work out that will be a Monday and you know the operation is
to be in Christchurch.
There is a chance to think of death.
You think about baking gingernuts.
You think about baking ginger crunch.
You think about whether you want a new bed or new spectacles
first.
You dream you can take wooden bookcases from the downstairs
room of your old house. They have adjustable shelving and
you dream you use them again.
You think how that is the first dream of the old house and that now
those dreams must be starting.
You think about the dawn chorus which does not happen at
your new house, though one or two birds seem to be doing their
individual best to pull up the sun.
You think about emailing the friend who is worried her cancer has
returned, but then think it is probably better just to let it go because
page 417 almost everything you say could be wrong.
You think about the woman who returned a plate on which you had
given her some ginger crunch. She’d left this painted African plate
with four persimmons in your letterbox.
You think about the cousin who said he would ring you this
weekend. Your thought is not of him, but about him ringing and he
has not rung.
You think about the Brighton Rock film where Helen Mirren still
manages to look like Queen Elizabeth, especially when she wears a
headscarf.
You think of the poem you wrote about leaving a house, and how
houses we have owned will come back to us in dreams.
You think about taking your computer into the next room.
You think maybe you ought to try to sleep.
You think you should just think about your breathing. You do this
for several breaths until the thought horses ride over and look at you
and you turn to them with their big protruding eyes and you forget
bout the movement of your breath.
You think how, if you are careful, you could move very quietly to the
computer.