There’s nothing like a morning walk to loosen all that has become tangled and taut. I took this picture back in December, on a morning of wandering wide swathes of open beach. I reveled in the sights and sounds as the sun rose and the skies transformed again and again. It was a day when I celebrated being small and finding myself lost in the flow of it. By chance, I scrolled past this photo again this week and saw it in a new way.
Above the vast expanse
of sandy beach
clouds gather
like a herd of horses
flick their tails up
into cerulean blue
and gallop along
the horizon
©Molly Hogan
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Robyn Hood Black at Life at the Deckle Edge.
Nix the comfort zone 
What an imagination. I love the imagery of ‘the clouds gathering like a herd of horse, tails flicking up’. I also feel quite small when I gaze out over a vast open space like the beach or prairie. Your poem was a great first read to start my day. 🙂
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Thanks, Debbie! I’m hoping to visit the beach again soon. Those open spaces are a great way to start a day!
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Galloping clouds! Perfect! Your first paragraph even sounds like a poem! Thanks for sharing. Happy Valentine’s Day.
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Thanks!
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Now I see the horses flicking their tails. Do your kids write a paragraph (just a paragraph) about what they see in a picture? What they might imagine? Of course, your sharing this poem would get their juices flowing, I bet.
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Yes, the tails are up, running across the sky, I imagine, just for poets, like you, right? Some days I wish I could leap over our mountains and find an ocean right there! Thanks for sharing your words, and your ocean, Molly!
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I’m so thankful to have the ocean nearby, but I imagine you find just as much inspiration from your mountains!
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Fire horses, perhaps…galloping the new year in.
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I hadn’t even thought of that! lol
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Great use of simile in your poem, Molly. An image revisited and reassessed reveals itself and demands a poetic response. How good is that?
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Thanks, Alan. I love writing in response to a photo.
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Horses flicking their tails. Yes! xo
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Time is magical for perspective!
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#truth!
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Oh, yes, the herd of horses galloping along the horizon. Just beautiful photo and even more so when I saw those tails flicking into the blue. Lovely!
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Thanks, Denise. I couldn’t unsee the horses once I saw them 🙂
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I see it, Molly! The horses and the cerulean blue: I wouldn’t have known they needed to be together until I read your poem.
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So lovely! “Cerulean blue” — perfect poem for Lunar New Year. 🙂
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I wish I’d thought of that when I was busy trying to come up with a New Year’s poetry postcard! lol
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A gorgeous photo and such vivid, bold imagery! Love this poem, Molly, and the photo that inspired it.
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Thanks, Karen! I’m hoping to sneak in another beach visit soon! The skies are always a treat!
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Oh, my goodness…I see the herd. My mom used to call those type of clouds, “mare’s tails.” I love your eye and how poetry is words and images for you.
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I wonder if in the back of my mind I’d heard that expression before, too, Linda…
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SO beautiful, Molly – thank you for sharing! (Especially resonated with me because we had a sky stretched across with wispy herringbone clouds on the morning I read this, and I was enchanted, and trying to conjure up a haiku.) :0)
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I’m amazed I haven’t gotten in a car accident with all the time I spend looking up for birds or at interesting cloud formations. Hope your haiku was duly conjured!
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