Conjuring Connections

by Katherine L. Gordon

A sadness creeps through me

in the grey sky-lid over earth barely morning,

salt tears of body and spirit.

I can never re-awaken in my old home

where cliff and woods sighed

with a faith in time’s river of eternity,

ever a bush, ever a bird,

a coyote basking in the moon

as generations renewed but remained the same,

old and young a blend in every entity.

Here I cannot find the connection.

I feel in every fibre

that I am not made

of halls and elevators,

not the shadows of once-people

I rarely see.

It is the walks into wilderness that save me.

Each day I find a new path

for there are woods surrounding

this rude intrusion into former forest.

I need to melt again

into the living earth

where dwells my pure core of being.

* * * * *

 "Conjuring Connections" is from Katherine L. Gordon's new poetry collection Caution: Deep Water. http://www.hmspress.ca/deepwater.html. The collection deals with the shock of leaving one’s home for the cultural phenomenon of retirement homes, expensive ghettoes for the vulnerable elderly.

Katherine L. Gordon is a rural Ontario poet, publisher, judge, editor and reviewer, working to promote the voices of women poets around the world, as they are now flowering into acclaim.  She has many books, chapbooks, anthologies and collaborations with fine contemporaries whose work inspires her.  Her poems have been translated and awarded internationally. Latest books: Piping at the End of Days, Valley Press, and Caution: Deep Water which was released by HMS Press, London, Ontario in November 2018.