ROBBIE COBURN’s The Foal in the Wire is the deeply moving and inspiring story of Sam, his love for a girl and the horse that brings them together. Read on for an extract.
EXTRACT
Foal
As I run down the veranda steps
in the dark
I can still hear them screaming
at each other
inside the house.
he doesn’t love her
and she doesn’t love him
but they stay.
I wish my words could change us,
teach our bodies to know
one another differently —
I want to teach him to love her
the way he can teach a horse to run
in the right direction.
I wish you could change
people’s behaviour
like you can with a horse.
I know they blame me
for holding them
together here.
I try to be invisible.
as I walk down the path
towards the horse track
I notice the stillness of the farm
as their voices fade into the distance.
no sound but the wind
through the grasses of the paddocks
on every side.
on the farm’s border, I see
there is a girl standing at the fence.
Julia.
the girl my age
from the next property.
we have spoken before
but in this darkness
our bodies are strangers.
Sam.
I can hear her call my name,
hear the ache of her voice
willing me towards her.
as I meet her eyes
at the paddock’s edge
I see she is standing
over a wounded foal.
I can smell the blood
and hear the panicked breathing —
hers and my own
and the faltering breath
of the injured foal
tangled in barbed wire,
the trembling shape
of a body in the grass.
Cutting Wire
Pressing my foot on the lowest wire
of the fence
I make a space for my body
and climb through
to the other side,
careful the wire doesn’t
burrow further
into the foal’s flesh.
it’s caught.
we have to cut the wire.
Julia turns and moves
through the dark grass
of the paddock
towards a shed
in the distance.
alone with the foal,
I lie down beside it
and run my hand gently
across its neck.
there are small furrows
caked with dried blood
where the barbs
have pierced the skin.
the foal raises its head slightly
and looks at me, confused.
I can see the pain welling up
behind its eyes.
I rest my head
on its flank
and feel its laboured breathing,
I hover my fingers over
the open wounds
and wish I could give the foal
my body.
I won’t let anybody hurt you.
you can’t hurt a body
that is beyond reach.
Julia returns
with the wire-cutters.
Do you think it was waiting for us?
I’ve never seen it before.
the foal must have broken
into the paddock
from one of the
neighbouring properties
in the distance.
I haven’t seen it before either —
I wonder how far it must have stumbled
to find itself here.
a dam would never leave her foal alone.
it must have walked off and become lost
taking a narrow path
somehow
its mother couldn’t follow.
I hope our parents will think
the wire was torn
by a cow breaking
through the fence.
I remove my jacket
and lay it on the grass,
pushing it beneath
the foal’s body.
it stirs slightly
when I reach across its back
and feel the cold wire
against my palms
as I wrap my hands
around it.
Julia cuts the wire
and I slowly lift it from the foal’s neck.
we roll the fragile creature over
until its body rests
on the jacket.
we take one side
of the jacket each
and together we pull
the wounded animal free.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robbie Coburn is a contemporary Australian poet. His poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies and his books include Ghost Poetry (2024), And I Could Not Have Hurt You (2023) and The Other Flesh (2019). He has been featured at The Wheeler Centre and La Mama Poetica, appeared as a guest at literary festivals including the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Canberra Writers Festival, Newcastle Writers Festival and Perth Poetry Festival, and run poetry workshops for youth mental health organisation Headspace.
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