Friday, June 1, 2018

ALLISON GRAYHURST



ALLISON GRAYHURST

AS YOUR SKY OPENS

I touch your eyelids
not to keep closed
nor to help lift,
just to understand
how such secrets form.

The night’s creatures
rise like needles from the earth,
into the trees, into the throbbing river’s arms.

You have so many days ahead,
so many visions unnamed, ready to be spoken.

Your tears drop like swallows.

Your smile changes the shape of each cloud.






WORKING WITH GLORY

In the rich thick salt
of a sea,
gulls gather creating
havoc with their stammering wings.

A dog brushes my knees.
Small pebble shells cover my toes.

I walk to the pavement where
an insect crawls,
seeing purpose there as great
as any mountain climber’s weight and cause.

I follow a madman off the pavement
into the bush, hearing the waking
of an oncoming downpour.

In a raven’s beak descending
a chant echoes into the open:

It brings in rays of maximum heat,
sets my name
on fire.






TO MOURN THE DUSK

Measure of rain,
echoing through his
protected slumber.

Authenticity locked beneath
his belly, amidst swarming
bullets of base destruction.

Rage grinding, titling his
equilibrium, shrinking
an ivory sun.

People play with him, give response
to his repeating voice, won’t abort
his fatal ebb and flow.

He sits with arrows under his seat,
trusts nothing but the iron isolation
of betrayal.

Will not speak to children or enjoy
a paint-by-number. Loves only
chewed wounds, impossible needs,

the drowned swimmer
of
his mind.







HAWK

Paradise bound
by doubt’s heavy claw.

Our promises were
fracturing. The hour
melted into sleep
then confusion.

In the bed where our stones
were gathered like oracles
of deliverance came the touch
of communion, your hands
crossing my boundary flesh.

Splitting the atmosphere,
and your eyes, feverish with love’s
great skill.

You circled me,
sliding down
through the stronghold space
between, entered
and gave what in tomorrow
I may never find.






THE LEAP

His body
has fallen
onto the pyramid’s point.
Pyramid
of passion’s climb, edge of
water of sunstroke-sea.
Thunder
in his bones, contagious,
moves through his nails and
hairstrands.
Has one dedication – to seek
and scream. Has no
mother
no rite of passage to
soak him in strength.
Thunder
of hard fought-for joy.
He tosses and turns at
the tip,
on his heels.
He lies flat, feet and arms
spread
like some great animal,
fossilized, once
in flight.

ALLISON GRAYHURST

ALLISON GRAYHURST is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Four times nominated for “Best of the Net”, 2015/2017, she has over 1150 poems published in over 460 international journals and anthologies. She has 21 published books of poetry, six collections and six chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
                                                                                                                           





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