Stampede
by Barbara Lightner
Hold back,
runaway stallion,
headstrong, determined
upon your course.
We have too long
pastured indifference
and its easy silence
feeding your power,
your pounding hoofbeat.
We will no longer hold
to inertia’s doom;
are not so hapless
as you depend on.
This day we hold hard
against your intractable runs;
the bit of our bridle
cutting into your
immeasurable
extravagances.
Barbara Lightner is a 73-year old shameless agitator who began writing poetry in law school to escape the intolerable burden of death by law. She grew up in rural Tennessee among sharecroppers and cotton magnates and lived among killer whales and dolphins when on an island in Puget Sound. She taught Creative Writing at Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon WA. She currently lives in Wisconsin where she owned and operated a 50-cow dairy farm; opened up and ran the Red Wheelbarrows Bookshop; and tried for political office where she failed miserably. The Madison WI Equal Opportunities Commission granted her its 20th Anniversary Award for Community Organizing in the Women’s Community. She has been known to write satire and parody.