Compartment #3 on the 990 route from Bath to Salisbury is where I am assigned to sit. Nestled into the plush blueberry patterned coach seats, I fold my softly gloved hands into the creases of my riding skirt and cross my booted ankles. Finding myself relaxing into sleep by the steady rattle of the railway carriage, my thoughts drift into the passing scenery viewed from the three windows. Lucious green landscapes dotted with borders of brush and mountains greet me to the right while the center window frames more mountains and barren field meeting leaden sky. To the left, my eyes are drawn to the chalk white horse known to all as the Westbury White Horse. A horse of magic and myth that I have been seeing in my dreams, its whinny as clear as the train whistle here against the Sussex Downs. I am called to lift the leather strap and crank open the window, the breeze gently lifting my hair and billowing my skirt against my boots until I am airborne, floating. Riding waves of light, sitting erect on the back of a milky white horse, my fingers tangle in her mane, hooves kicking chalk as we canter through the centuries across the Salisbury Plains. As the sky darkens into the canvas of night, we wander down to the Bridewell Springs to drink the clear mountain water. When the hour strikes midnight, I am awakened by the chime of the Bratton church clock and the ghost of a white horse is left to ride on alone.

—Inspired by a painting by Eric Ravilious:

Publisher’s Notes:

1. Train Landscape (watercolor painting, 1940) by British painter and lithographer Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) is held by the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums. Learn more about the painting at Ark UK.

Image was downloaded from Wikimedia Commons (1 August 2023).

2. See also an earlier painting by Eric Ravilious, The Westbury Horse (1939); as well as the Wikipedia article about the hill carving on Salisbury Plain in Wilshire, England: Westbury White Horse.

Karen A. VandenBos

Once upon a time, Karen A. VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She has a PhD in Holistic Health where a course in shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds. She can be found unleashing her imagination in two online writing groups, and her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, One Art: a journal of poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, Southern Arizona Press, and others.