Sunday Bells

by Katherine L. Gordon

On the sidewalk a block away

streets with pretty houses

families of the free

expecting to live forever

in their gardens of the moment.

From an unseen church there sounds

a Sunday bell sweet throughout the sacred hours

of a perceived holy morning.

Tears well as former Sundays are conjured:

hats and hankies, hands held,

pews of Saturday-bathed folks

awaiting priestly scolding,

greeting old friends in eternity promised embrace,

roof of the mouth wafer assuring absolution.

Now empty streets

intrusive mock European village of the old and alone

trying to recall the stream of life

with all its bells of beauty.

* * * * *

"Sunday Bells" is from Katherine L. Gordon's poetry collection Caution: Deep Water.  

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 recent collection, Caution: Deep Water, deals with the shock of leaving one’s home for the cultural phenomenon of retirement homes, expensive ghettoes for the vulnerable elderly. Her poems have been translated and awarded internationally.