The calling
You’re sitting in the half-light,
in a cavern
scoured from limestone,
on a boulder
by an underground stream.
Behind:
a dark tunnel,
too narrow to crawl through,
where water flows from,
cool and clear.
Ahead:
heaped debris,
the walls of a sinkhole,
that deep shaft of sunlight,
hart’s-tongue ferns.
You don’t know
how you got here.
You don’t know
how to get out.
You listen:
Come into the light.
Helen Evans’s pamphlet is Only by Flying (HappenStance Press). Poems have appeared in The Rialto, The North, and Magma; one was a joint winner of the Manchester Cathedral 600 competition. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing (University of St Andrews).