A Thousand Words

Monday, December 23, 2019

A good photo suggests ideas beyond its actualities, and a really-good one can set a mind on fire. This header photo is a favorite of mine.

First noticeable is the symmetry of the two animals, and perhaps next, questions about what’s captured their attention. Those are enough to make this photo interesting and maybe very good. But for me, the picture offers more.

It catches Rosie’s blaze–a facial white stripe from forehead to nose. This photo captures perfectly my brain’s image of her distinctive and well-defined blaze. It doesn’t spill over her face but is contained, as if pre-drawn to specifications. Her blaze is useful, for example, as a quick way of distinguishing Rosie from other horses, and especially from her little sister, Sunni, who’s sometimes clone-like.

I have many photos of Rosie’s blaze, but not the one on my mind and that I’d love to capture. It’s her “in-the-distance stripe”, singularly visible and high-white, through low-hanging and heavily-leafed tree limbs. That lone stripe is what I see, when she’s in a neighbor’s pasture and I’m a couple-tenths of a mile away and walking toward her. Rosie is alert, staring in my direction, holding high that white stripe.

Through the leaves and branches, the straight white stripe shows Rosie expecting and waiting. What’s in her mind? Little telling what a horse thinks, but for me it’s about a relationship, our mutual connection. This delights me and is real enough to hold a horse’s attention.

In my brain Rosie’s stripe symbolizes our mutual experience and connection. And it represents my personal learning and development vis a vis Rosie. She can teach bunches about how to get along, well-enough, with a quirky, bossy mare.

Then there’s that amazing Pimmy. To her, “getting along with Rosie” is a science. For example, Rosie will run Sunni away from whatever horses mutually enjoy, like a stack of new, sweet-smelling hay, but she will let Pimmy share food and space.

Just can’t say enough, that a good photo is worth more than a thousand words.

Dear Friends: Rosie’s stripe is a subject in some my poems. So interesting. Diana