JOHN GREY

 

Poetry Ward

 

I am writing

in the throes of a bad cold

which I pray won't infect

the chickadee's throat

or the red-rose's hue.

And I've this terrible headache

that I hope

pounds in me alone

and not out of

the old family photographs

that decorates both desktop

and the poem I'm working on.

I've a wound slowly healing,

a pain in my right shoulder

and some things less curable

like a turning of the calendar

and a wrinkle at the lips.

These I feel as I express my feelings.

Still, lines emerge.

What isn't love must be survival.

 

Graveyard Duty

 

I pass a guy with a tear in either eye.

Children giggle at a familiar name

before their mother hushes them

into reverence. "If grandma's gone

to a better place," asks one, "then

what's she doing here?" I’m with

strangers and with those I once knew,

they too now strangers. Weeds,

plaques, droopy willows, and

patches of green jewel grass.

The sorts of things that keep death happy.

 

Joe is buried here. Aunt Grace.

Someone named Clarence. Victims

of their own lives, laying claim

with crosses. I wander this cemetery,

leave flowers, embrace the angel's wing.

Beneath me, the earth is giving.

The softer the better,

if I'm going to walk on graves

 

Lights

 

Between fading sunlight

and the blue tangle of apparitions,

trees we've known forever cease to exist,

floral gardens become daguerreotypes,

windows are for nothing more than contemplating

the half-face.

It's time for indoor crises,

the expectations of a grandfather's persistent cough,

and grandma, confined to bed,

already penciled out in some arrangements.

Kids turn their room into a pig trough

while the middle generation do their best

not to plunge into flame.

As day ends and night takes no pity

on rock or brush or even plains and mountains,

the action goes indoors

where the closest people are,

where bodies, even when in separate rooms,

rub against each other,

and sometimes even act out physically

what their heads have been telling them for years.

There's a hazard to such cloistering

and every house on every block is in on it.

Even the man who lives alone

is with himself more than ever

when sun gives up the ghost to the ghosts

and the ceiling bulb

is never more accusatory.

 

The Interruption

 

Sorry I interrupted.

All that bliss, the ecstasy,

overwhelming your face

and then I burst in.

My car in your driveway –

the sound of a mini-thunderhead.

My knock on the door.

It must have felt like it

was pounding in your head.

What I wanted

could have waited.

But I was anxious to be with you.

I didn’t think.

 

You were in the midst

of divine inspiration

and I brought boring news

about a microwave oven

and a distant cousin.

It was just an excuse.

But I cannot be excused.

Your mind was in

some other, perfect place.

My presence was

like sun spots interfering

with your reception.

Who knows if you ever would

attain that state again.

 

Your look said it all.

My anticipation

blew out into an apology on the spot.

One that started out ingenuous

but was sincere before I was done.

 

Yet you were friendly enough.

You poured me a drink.

You dragged out some small talk

from the last time we were together,

freshened it up like new.

You even pretended to be glad to see me.

That’s solitude for you.

Its lies come to the surface

when there’s company involved.

 

On The Eel Run

 

A slither of eels

slip through my fingers,

bury themselves out of reach.

Then the stream calms.

My hand comes to nothing.

 

A tanager alights on a branch

where I cannot reach it.

A rabbit skitters away

at speeds beyond me.

 

Time to go home,

hug wife and children.

A good haul when

it's my own kind running.

 

JOHN GREY

 

JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books,” Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.