Music & Lyrics: M.L. Hammond (© 2008)

After my big riding accident, I eventually started riding again at a  therapeutic riding facility. Many people don’t know they exist all over the world, and that horses can provide powerful physical, mental and emotional therapy for children and adults with disabilities. This song is based on the kids and horses I’ve met at three such facilities.

Emily’s slim and dark haired
Emily’s eyes are blue
Emily’s going on fourteen
but she’s different from me and you

Her limbs don’t really work right

she needs canes to help her walk
and she mostly squeals or mutters
she doesn’t really talk

Chorus:
Creature of the earth
but looking to the open skies
oh oh oh, Emily flies

Cody is a little bay Standardbred
he raced until he was six
then he went lame and somebody figured
he wasn’t worth the trouble to fix

Sal found Cody in a feedlot
where you buy a horse by weight
but he had a kind eye and Sal had a hunch
he was meant for a better fate

Creature of the earth
but looking to the open skies
Cody may be only walking,
but Emily flies

And Cody is the best, nothing fazes him
that’s what the volunteers at Sal’s all say
the kids can wriggle and squirm and shout
he seems to understand that it’s just their way

And when Emily’s lifted up into the saddle
she gets this look on her face
Sal thinks it might be joy
or at least some kind of grace

And she could swear as she leads them round
when she looks at Emily’s eyes
that though Cody may be only walking,
steadily, patiently walking,
Cody may be only walking,
but Emily flies

Creature of the earth
but looking to the open skies
Cody may be only walking,
but Emily flies

Emily flies, Emily flies
Cody may be only walking,
but Emily flies

“There’s an art to writing a song like that.  My admiration.  You open my
heart to feel I have entered the hearts of two creatures I can’t really
know.” — Eric Nagler