It's no fit weather, no fit time, for a fleshless horse to ride—

but she's clad for parties: trailing ribbons and bells,

a bedsheet-cloak; her eyes the greenest bottle-ends

that ever saw out an old year or midwifed a new.

Her bone-beaked head is all a-grin with

the laugh that outlives both mares and men.

With hobnailed boots (so much better than hooves)

she strikes sparks from the street;

demanding entry from each merrisome home.

A duel of insults, from without and within, will turn the key.

The Grey Mare knows all your secrets. Let her in;

hold a bowlful of beer up to her sprung jaws

and she'll bless you for a twelvemonth.

Your past rides her onto the next house, and the next,

until, saddled with time and harnessed by ale,

she canters to unknown meadows between the winters:

a grazing beyond the bells of the new.

But you know some roads will always lead her back—

make her welcome.