Relaxed & Forward Blog

Photo & Poem: Explain the Sky

  Restless eyes behind closed lids, the early hours lay flat, dull to these scurrying thoughts. Rise to use the...
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Photo & Poem: Let Down

  So convinced of her isolation, she had become its primary cause. So exhausted to chance, she had retreated to...
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Photo & Poem: Finding Voice

  “Curiosity is a sign of courage,” she said, hushing my correction. Bright praise for my colt chasing her dog...
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Photo & Poem: Her Return

  Lawn chairs got tossed, doors banged and windows rattled. She came back late, maybe even drunk. When I ventured...
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Photo & Poem: Corgi Moon

The prairie rings with strange voices, this Wolf Moon is owned by coyotes, less visible by day in dry winter...
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Photo & Poem: Night Air

Told to fear the dark, my tiny legs bolted the breathless distance from the milking barn across to the house,...
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Photo & Poem: After Snow

This night snow floats down, each flake so light that it doesn’t land so much as hover precariously over fence...
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Photo & Poem: Calming Signal

inhale light exhale peace ... Every good wish from our herd to yours, with gratitude for all you have given...
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Photo & Poem: Dark Solstice

Christmas lights are a poor trade for the wildfire clouds at dawn, iridescent light drainingthe midnight purple fringe from the...
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Photo & Poem: Not Allowed

Animals were not allowed in our farm house, three rooms and an attic. Dark mornings with frost on the inside...
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Photo & Poem: Ice

Clouds fell to the ground in a fog, the air dense as mud forcing the sun dark early, resting so...
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Photo & Poem: Stetson

Sweat-stained pinch front Stetson, the flat color of sand, perched over straight eyebrows. I asked after the swayback sorrel grazing...
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Photo & Poem: Thanksgiving

We’d be grateful for a kind winter. If that works out, maybe a sweet season of green grass, probably not...
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Photo & Poem: Old Bones

  A night so frigid the snowstopped at midnight, the farmdark under thick clouds. Hetakes a shallow breath, hopingto warm...
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Photo & Poem: Moonlit

The path north to the barn, icy mud slick with decomposing leaves, as a spent season slips away under the...
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Photo & Poem: Ghost

  Her big sister won a contest, sharing breakfast with minor horse celebrities, so this shy red-haired girl with glasses...
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Photo & Poem: Respite

Caramel and blond, a mare as beautiful as she is wildly alert to every sound, brittle bravado searching for control...
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Photo & Poem: Other

  Stalking each other, the pale color of prairie straw, she should be a coyote but her tail has short...
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