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To Stephen Edgar, on his sixtieth birthday

Tim Murphy

Apr 01 2012

0 mins

One of us wins the race, a length, a nose,
War Admiral behind us sucking dust,
let it be close. Fitting it is and just,
and let me play Sea Biscuit at the close.

At every race you win, I leap and cheer,
tipple my flask and tip my ribboned hat
to the colt blanketed in roses that
steams in his stable as the flashbulbs near.

A fantasy: we’re aging stallions now,
our races long behind us but our seed
treasured by trainers who have mares to breed.
Neither of us was harnessed to the plough.
 

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