Every year the Chronicle asks for creative submissions from equestrians 18 years and younger, and selected art, essays and poems (scroll down, below gallery, to view longer poems full-size) were published in the June 27-July 18, 2022, issue. We wanted to share all the fantastic submissions online as well. Enjoy!

An Epic for an Equine
By Caroline Kunkle, 16, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

I sing of a girl and a horse
An equine Romeo and his teenage Juliet
Who first had to learn how to turn the correct way
And now is jumping at angles
And showing cavaletti, crossrails, and verticals
Who is boss.

Muse, tell me the story
Of a horse
By the name of Romeo
Who teaches a girl
Lessons she’ll never forget
Who is a saint
Disguised as a bay
With fussy ears instead
Of a halo.

Tell me the reason
With what act of fate,
Out of so many others
In this world
did I somehow
Make my way
To Romeo.

Tell me the story
Of our love
Of selfies in the wash pit
Of canter poles
Taken like oxers
And accidental
Yet perfect
Flying lead changes.

Of losing a stirrup
On the outside line
and tucking and rolling
And faceplanting in the sand
To find Romeo walking back
To check on me, his Juliet.

Of sitting trots
Into the ring
and a certain equine
Prancing like a circus horse
Right into my heart.

Thus, their love unrolled.
And the memories they hold within
Too great for words
Give forth
To this epic
For an incredibly special equine.

The Biweekly Exercise of Belvoir Hounds
By Emily Vitale, 18, Unionville, Connecticut

His snout lifts, grazing the morning sky.
The men in white are close, he realizes.
The kennel door creaks as it opens, and the
youngest lets a joyful noise slip out.
Internally, he reprimands himself, for
They are not dogs, but Belvoir hounds.

Grass tickles the paws of the hounds,
a symphony of muted tones painting the sky.
A man in white pauses, as he realizes
someone’s fallen behind. He whistles, and the
sea of heads snap his way, his the odd one out.

When the outlier arrives, he pushes on, for
they are Belvoir hounds. The path, he thinks for
a moment, exists solely for these hounds.
He imagines, in their brains, it reaches the sky.

As she stumbles, the pack’s oldest realizes
her age. The dead leaves splinter underneath paws, and the
oldest wonders if she will do the same. Out
of the pack, the youngest stumbles, out
of luck and of will. He’s fallen behind, for
he didn’t eat last night, pushed away by Belvoir hounds.

His melancholy gaze lifts to the sky;
He’s the runt, he realizes.
He goes unnoticed, and the
Belvoir hounds continue. And the
trees sway, acorns falling out
and threatening their heads, for
they’re ensconced with the trail, the Belvoir hounds.

A man in white gazes up, at the ombre sky,
which inches towards 8am, he realizes.
Time has spilled through fingers, he realizes,
How can it be near 8? And the
hounds don’t know their time’s run out.
What was it they were exercising for?
Those humanly stupid Belvoir hounds.

He looks up, at the natural clock, at the sky.
And it melts from dawn’s sky to midday’s sky;
the trail leads back to the kennel, and the
men lead. And they’ll follow, those Belvoir hounds.