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ARTS AND CULTURE

Fenced in

  • 16 February 2016
Fenced in   I am living in the prayer of what I had to do.   The lonely horse stands welcomes the approach with a nod which doesn't dislodge the flies from his face. The proffered dry grass becomes a gentle brush, freeing him from tormentors.   Where is that girl now who wanted a pony? While her horse who cannot talk is swallowing up the time of her forgetting.   Simple and pure kindness can be like rain in a land parched of understanding.   I am living in the prayer of what I have to do.     Winter epiphany   Death is larger than life. We are more than ourselves. The breadth of our vision escaping horizons in passing from this realm to the greater, so far, that I can come home and find the bare-limbed birches dancing with silver spheres and know that an angelic visitation has bandaged the wound.   Snow splats against the window, and dying would be for such a day. Faint rays of yellow filter through the grey like sad searchlights. I want to know who you are. Closing my eyes, I see. It is he.   For Nicholas — August 2000     Knowing   A full moon illuminates and the cat sits meditating drinking the evening on a patch of dry earth.   A shadow and the yellowed grass holding a full summer's captured heat turns to grey as red leaves fall.   Over there the mountain's humped great body the backdrop to our lives. When it snowed deep in the night and what you could have been you pulled away from.   I cannot pick up the telephone the sound will not be heard the disconnection will remain even as the moon promises.   The telephone stops ringing. If you cannot understand your self it can be trouble for others.

 

Cheryl Howard has been a poet for as long as she can remember, but her poems are slow to reach the surface. She thinks if we all read more poetry, we would be the better for it.