Five Poems by John Drudge

 

Another Place

 

This is a place

For astronomers

Gazers

Into the night sky

Dreamers

On the edge

Of nowhere

As the sun moves

Across the horizon

Along a solstice

Of stepping stones

Aligned

With the oldest mountain

And a place

From an older measure

Wrapped in

Forgotten geometry

And tilled over

By time

Etchings in old bones

Tracking changes

In the night sky

A constellation

Of everything forgotten

Over generations

Of sacredness

Lost to the wind

Our origins

Inherited

Blind

Autumn in the Valley

 

I remember

That time

We drove

To the flea market

In Carpentras

With the church bells

Ringing

Across the valley

Over the sound

Of redemption

Fading

In a late fall rain

And the wind

Beating on

Through the Luberon

Bending lavender

To the ground

Disintegration

 

The atomization

Of life

Of disorder

The way things

Fall apart

On long sleepless nights

And abstract days

Laying alone

In the tall grass

In summer

And in dreams

Along a still line

Waiting

For you

New Math

 

We live in an age

Of islands

Outcrops

Of self-designed exile

Of hate

And Ponzinomics

The nullification of history

And the stripping down

Of courage

With an overriding desire

For self-preservation

A mathematical conundrum

With an “N” of one

Arrived at through

Long division

The Search

 

With each stab

Into the darkness

It’s not reality

But the feeling

About reality

That I’m trying to reach

A hollow scream

Below impressions

Penetrating the inexpressible

With words that float

Around the point

Of a thing

To some other side

That can’t be seen

In search

Of unknowable reflections

On an opaque sea

Beneath waves of distortion

Alone

With the nature of dreams

Reverberating

Silent truths

John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.