Poem: "Patterns in the Grass"

This poem is the freebie for the April 2012 Torn World Muse Fusion.  It was inspired by a prompt from wyld_dandelyon and features the feral horses in part of the Southern Empire.

They move, swift flickers
of motion appearing and disappearing
amongst the bunch grasses --

pale gold palominos
and reddish-gray claybanks,
strawberry roans with their flecked hides
and appaloosas like paint spatters,
duns and buckskins with barred haunches
and feral stripes along their spines --

all alert, ears quivering,
tails switching, feet stomping,

feral horses sweeping the prairie
for the spotted hunters,
always waiting for the death-laugh
of the dappled dogs

at which they will be over the hills and gone.