Brumbies run, by Kerry Scuffins

(for “Brumby’s Run” Shelter, Beaufort, Victoria.)

The brumbies run from the roaring, the guns.

Death from the sky! The brumbies run.

The beauties, the old ones, the mares and their foals,

The stallion, desperately guiding the fold.

But they fall, and they die –

But not all. Some fly,

Mortally wounded, beyond the scopes

-and meet more rifles; yards and ropes.

A good horse costs a lot to buy

But we shoot ‘em down from the innocent sky.

Helicopters and the slaughterhouse

For the riding pony and the working horse.

In Brumbies, the Australian Whaler lives on.

Thoroughbred, Arab and Percheron.

And ‘twas a brumby stock-horse bought the herd home

In “The Man from Snowy River” poem.

- Kerry Scuffins

Dedicated to “Digger” and Colleen O’Brien, the woman who saved him.

Reprinted from The Million Star Hotel with permission of the author.