Two Poems: Between the Bell Struck and the Silence

Small Sonnet

I take the path between the trees
and leaves rain down like light
until I reach the openness.
Even before I see the horses
they’ve trained their ears on me,
their nickering a kind of music.
I have a field instead of a church.
Mountains and the sea’s heartbeat.
I am not alone; the dead
and the living come with me.
The field and the beauty.
An owl settles onto a branch
more bare than yesterday,
the light gathered around my feet.

Considering the passage of time

The creek runs clear and cold
and the white horse whinnies
when he hears my steps on the path.
Time is different now.
Time has come its long slow way.

To this now. This present.
I rise early, as the sun reaches
through the arms of the cedars
into my window. Every morning
the same. Four, five days in a row.

I pass the tree where last summer
a cougar sharpened her claws,
shredding the trunk. You know
it’s a cougar from the height.
They say a bear will do the same,
only higher.

Meanwhile, I have left a letter
on my windowsill, addressed to the moon,
which I hope she will read. I’ll wait
the hours for the sun’s long finishing,
then wait again for the moon, feral being,
to climb the sky with her borrowed light.

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Pamela Porter is the author of fourteen published books: eleven volumes of poetry and four books for children and young adults, including two novels in free verse. Her work has garnered numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Award, and first prizes from the Canadian Author’s Association, the Malahat Review, the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize, Freefall Magazine, PRISM International, Vallum magazine, and others.

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