"Orienteering Newfoundland" by Alice Haines

Editor’s note: “Combining a compelling use of rhyme and a purposeful collection of sound, this sonnet speaks excellence in nature poetry. As we travel with the speaker from ‘the folding-map‘ to ‘tablelands of awe,‘ readers are reminded of the smell of a roaring adventure.”

Orienteering Newfoundland

We believed in traveling here to there,
could read the legends of the folding-map,
graph city grids, interpret signs. The traps  
of labyrinth, one-way streets, did not ensnare  

our booted feet. We planned our steps with care,
pressed through rutted roads, leaped sidewalk gaps,
braved broken bridges, detoured road mishaps.
We reckoned, kept our wits, and always dared.

Now come these mountains, tablelands of awe,
‘cross contour lines the caribou cut trails.
Flash floods etch gullies, barren rocks exhale
cold fog, the sun has lost its east-west law. 

Where avalanches cough bold glacial till,
we’re staggered by the wind—by ageless will.

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Alice Haines is a physician in inner-city Lewiston, Maine. She enjoys playing with words and getting to know them. Her poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, Northern New England Review and Off the Coast. Alice lives in an 1820’s farmhouse with her husband, David.