Fenced in
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.