ALLISON GRAYHURST

 

 

Surrendered

 

In the middle -

steady, harsh waves,

salty flavoured ocean,

stranded, treading.

Love comes smiling.

It is a ghost.

Joy comes and passes by.

Purpose comes but floats by

like a jellyfish riding the momentum.

 

In the middle, tired of treading,

no escape, just the ebb and flow, surging,

retreating waters. What lies beneath makes

no difference because nothing is above

except the burning brutal sun, cloud cover

occasionally, and only air to eat.

 

Skin cells, bloating. Eyes, unable to keep

open. In the middle

of an endless abyss, all my happy days

behind me.

 

I hold my hands in prayer position,

arms raised over my head.

I stop struggling to not go under,

I go under and let that weight, the peace

at last, take me down.

 

She

 

Fear is splendid

in making the body inflamed,

bloated on trepidation at the news

of many meadows burning.

 

She hurried and found a healer

inside herself, willing to go

the distance and forfeit

personal power for a greater

acquisition.

She understood the traveller and

the sit-at-homer as one in the same,

especially on a stormy day or a year of upheaval.

 

Faith is the bullseye with no point-marks gained

unless hit dead-centre, directing every focus

to only that centre.

Faith is the wave to ride to the shore,

removed from other moving sources,

like wind and arm-strokes.

 

She opened herself to fear

not denying it but seeing it

as just another entity

under the canopy, smaller

than the giving sun.

 

Out

 

I asked to be let out

from that unwanted accomplishment.

I asked to shed my shame, my duty

and the hard-core call of doing time.

 

It was taken down and away from me,

along with so much more.

Guilt, and worldly bondage

also fell along with security,

along with a strange, twisted pride.

 

Knuckles down, hands still folded.

In my head are ghosts of patterns dissolved

but are still haunting. Ways of being I don’t have to

carry are dropped, but my empty arms are stalled

in position, humbled by uncertainty.

Set free and starting over, but not yet started,

just starting to try to etch out different

possibilities, a solid surging becoming.

 

Whiffs of passing currents,

rich aromas that entice briefly then fade.

Whiffs I cannot capture and keep, not now, maybe never,

let out, dumbfounded,

helpless, screaming, just born.

 

A Love Like No Other

 

Your steady love has saved me,

one more dark wave rising and you

hold my hand, staying the course,

sharing with me your glowing inspiration,

giving me space to expose

my gruesome wounds within.

You do not flinch, or distract, but give me room

to writhe and cry out and then you look at me,

love in your eyes like God at my table,

offering water, acceptance,

and with that acceptance, untellable mercy.

 

Every night you read to me to keep me afloat,

to cup me in the flow of your voice

reminding me why we are here.

I think you will leave me, here

to implode in this over-a-year pit

of me climbing up to the edges, falling back in,

collapsing on bedrock, but you never do.

You stay and you are steady

and you are a miracle, patient, never

cursing your fate, never letting me go.

 

 

ALLISON GRAYHURST

ALLISON GRAYHURST has been nominated for “Best of the Net” six times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and 6 chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com