Saturday 12 June 2010

the good and the sad





it's fun to pootle round New Orleans
shooting from the hip with
the modern equivalent of the box brownie

every so often
something sad finds its way into the frame
these poor mules work 18 hour days
forced to trot on the hard bitumen surface
wearing steel shoes
my feet [clad in wool socks and farm boots]
are killing me after 8 days of pavement walking
[they much prefer paddocks]
so i can imagine how tired those poor mules must feel
how their legs must ache
after working that hard surface all day

how about at least getting them some rubber shoes?
surely there'd be a market for rubber horseboots
perhaps made from recycled tyres
to take some of the banging out of those poor bones

there are horses the whirled over
working long days
pulling fat tourists about
on hard roads


at least these guys seem reasonably well fed
unlike their poor skeletal cousins in India

6 comments:

  1. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have that horrible heat coming up from the road hitting the underside of their feet. I am glad that they use mules instead of horses though as the mules are stronger.

    Am looking forward to working with you this week in TN.

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  2. here i sometimes see amish horses strugling with a load on the roads in the snow...and they are often on the thin side of svelte.

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  3. That shot of the step stool is incredible!

    I felt the same way about the tourist elephants in the streets of Bangkok. So sad they looked.

    Enjoy your trip.
    Kim

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  4. That's a great idea, why don't they have rubber horse shoes instead of steel ones.

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  5. The NYC Central Park carriage horses make me sad. They are so resigned.

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  6. So much misery. poor creatures. Did you give them a beniet for their troubles at least?

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