"if wishes were horses, all rides would be free"

"if wishes were horses, all rides would be free" so writes a friend..


I thought I remembered my Nana J saying it differently, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." It was a way of saying, "Wish all you want, but there's very little hope of any of it coming true."
Still we did wish.
We wished for snow on days that school reports were due.
We wished the rain to stop falling on our little beach at the lake.
Oh, and we wished that Janice Ford's father would smile more when he saw us together on his front porch swing.
We wished that songbird would repeat his tune till we could learn to whistle it.
We wished for an easy pitch when we were at bat and a pop fly when we were standing in left field.
We wished for a cloud to pass over the sun for a minute or two when we were baking ourselves red on the shores of Rocky Neck.
We wished we could remember the names of the two blond girls who laughed so brightly at the Rec dances that summer of '64.
We wished for cars to stop when we were hitchhiking through Vermont's mountains.
We wished we hadn't decided to carry our typewriter with us on the road.

We wished that Jackie Curtain hadn't been shot through in a little green place on the map far away. And we wished it had been us until we told our mother that and then we wished we hadn't said anything at all.

We wished we had stayed that night. We wished we hadn't stayed so long at Howard Johnson's or had that second Black Cow. We wished we'd let BettyAnn talk us out of leaving.

and oh we wished for love.
and oh we wished for peace.

and oh sometimes all we wished for was a little, just a moment, of sleep.

===
We wished,
and every single wish we wished
spun through the air,
a horsehair on the wind.
Sometimes it would tie a knot to truth,
but more often
it would fly up out there
to be sewn into the mattress of the songbird's nest.

Joe(Tie a wishknot on your finger with a horsehair)Nation