Pendulum
CC Canada Poet Laureate John Hoben is a PhD student in Education at Memorial University. His poetry has won a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award (2004) and 2nd prize in Memorial University’s Gregory Power Poetry Award (2007) for emerging student writers. His work has appeared in small press publications in British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. Born and raised in Musgrave Harbour, a small fishing community located on the north-east coast of Newfoundland, John currently lives in Torbay, Newfoundland with his wife and daughter.
John’s latest poem Pendulum is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence.
Pendulum
by John Hoben
My grandmother said you
were beautiful
and your voice was like
the sound of the first birds of spring
and your long black tresses
fell like the shadow of the moon
on the face of the unmoving sea.
You left your young love
for the city of crowded storefronts
and muddy streets,
a servant girl from Carmanville,
far from your home in the little cove,
where rocky cliffs and rolling
meadows leapfrogged
in the face of the blue
and boundless deep.
But in the end they say
this was the way the thing went:
frantic whispers as creaking steps
approached the wooden door;
his hand across your open mouth
and the long descent
into perfect blackness
you and the child dangling above
the feet you saw so firmly planted
upon the attic floor.
