Requiem for a Rocking Horse

Dylan's rocking horse grazes at the curb today.
His broken-down nag gets to take its final look
At the blue sky as it waits for the garbage truck;
After the growling crunch of a compactor's jaws
It will be laid to rust in a cemetery of refuse.

Our son always viewed it as his galloping "Horse."
His friend was always there to carry him away.
He'd climb, often sleepy-eyed onto it and rock
Into alertness; tenderly placing a blanket
Over "Horse's" head became a bedtime ritual.

The discarded gown of a graduate of childhood,
"Horse's" shiny brown leather and flowing black mane
Already bore the scars and fraying signs of age
When his possession passed to our son's brand
To be of service to yet another young cowboy.

The snap of a spring soon became a calamity
That could conjure forth a torrent of frantic tears.
Deprived of his means to escape into a world
Of bounding motion, Dylan would panic like an angel
That found itself earthbound, deprived of its wings.

It's now a starving emaciated carcass that bears
Little resemblence to a horse; a skeleton of steel
That's retained its bouncing life of liberating rhythm
From Dylan's first hesitant climb onto its saddle
To his wild, pendulum rides of reckless abandon.

He'd ride his limitless range of imagination.
The green living room rug became the prairie,
The cats mountain lions and the dog a snarling wolf
As Dylan outrode gangs of stuffed animal outlaws
While roping in vocabulary with a lariat mind.

He rode you from stimulation to Sesame Street,
From Big Bird to Smurfs, now to Power Rangers,
Your time is finished.  You've been callously discarded,
Just as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus soon will be
During his inexorable journey toward adulthood.

"Horse," may you gallop forever in his reveries;
As free as the wild stallion that races the wind,
As unfettered as the dreams of our childhood.
I hope that there's a stall for you in Dylan's memories.
I'm certain that you'll always retain a place in mine.