The White Horse Divers, Lake Ontario, 1908

Twice a day, two white horses

climb a scaffold, pause

and dive down a long way, then clamber

out again, dripping.

Was he aware of the crowd’s long gasp? Did she,

feeling the stream of air, the startle of water

have a complacent moment, knowing herself

Pegasus, though without wings?

Or was the plunge

each afternoon and evening mirrored

by a lurch in the curve of the belly, no matter

how many times they climbed that scaffold

for the great fall, the sun, the reverse birth

as the lake closed over them? Then the panic

and struggle toward shore, applause,

blankets and a brief respite, just long enough

to forget the seething people, the rickety planks,

the sleek tumble down.

J. W. GORMAN’S

DIVING HORSES

THE WHITE BEAUTIES

KING AND QUEEN

Dive Here Every

Afternoon and Evening

The slender scaffold bridges out

over the lake, the horse

halfway through a tense and sunlit dive,

its freakish grace transfiguring

the crowd, a trickle of the mildly curious.

Close your eyes.

There you are, flattened

to that breath-stealing

photograph; you are absorbed, a presence

in white. But are you the horse

or a woman in the crowd below,

white dress streaked

with grey, suddenly, painfully weeping

for the flight before you?

Or perhaps

you are the more dangerous, more beautiful

tragedy, the circular motion

of afternoon and evening, the king and queen

trembling before each execution, then delivered

from the water, given food, love

from a silent man who brushes their coats.

Be the horse. Be patient and simple, blind

to anything beyond this moment, step out

on trembling legs toward the lake, knowing that

there is something behind this, something

that sustains, propels, repeats.