Horseshoe Ballad Poem by Oleg Vorobyov

Last turn of Anno Domini,
When fireworks and crackers raved,
My uncle bountiful gave
Me a horseshoe as a festive gift,
Handmade when he was serving term
To pay for th'wrong he'd done to one.

The plastic arc with dotted studs
Suspended on a copper string.
None could have brought a plainer thing
To pass for most endearing boon
As it was made to touch the vein,
A spot where vulnerable's heart!

I'm not that moved ‘cause of man's ways
To feel like tender hearts would feel,
Still the horseshoe gave me a thrill
As I half-said sincerest thanks.
So blessed was I with a sign of luck
My roughly-hewn uncle gave me then.

The delicate clutch for me to yield
Was out of sense (my digits coarse) ,
Not for the neck of human horse.
I brought it to my office home
And hooked it on the monitor's side:
White-collared amulet, forsooth.

The tinkered fetish as it is
Reminds me of the Sylvesterfest,
And of how the uncle made it thus
To keep for years until I,
To him endeared like a son,
Turned up the horseshoe to receive.

The filigree of copper coils,
The polished concave with embossed
Studs of a sort of a metallic gloss, -
The work of the culpable artisan -
Such trinkets, ornaments, bijous
Are manufactured by kept birds.

A piece anticipating luck,
A proxy bringing a good hap
To be presented to a chap
Unlikely deemed as an animist,
Yet who's got a touch of an artiste,
An imaginative smattering.

Some good, some benefit since then
Had come to me in measures quaint.
And what I hereto had attained
May've been through doings of the thing.
Oh, magnet, drawing fortunes thus,
Providing a propitious chance!

But maybe luck's in what I live,
Protected and ensconced on earth.
So, guardianship's its sole worth!
And what I feel's the protecting hand
That tapped producing the safeguard
With warmth and caring and love…