Five Poems by John Grey

 

ANY MOMENT NOW

 

In her teens, my mother played tennis.

I have seen the snaps of her,

 

up on her toes, both arms raised,

left hand gripping white ball,

 

right with fingers firmly around

the handle of her racket.

 

Rumour has it that she could

have gone far in the sport.

 

But that never happened.

There are no photographs of her

 

in her early twenties, holding up

the first-place trophy,

 

collecting the winner’s check.

She went from promising

 

to wedding glossies with no

record of the in-between.

 

She was already the woman I remember,

bent over the sideboard,

 

peeling carrots, shelling peas,

while we kids grabbed at the hem of her skirt,

 

crying out for our needs, not hers.

She didn’t once express regret

 

but, if a camera was around,

she instinctively turned away,

 

as if there was already enough evidence on file.

Like that picture of her in white, about to serve.

 

Any moment now, racket will smack ball.

But it’s been years since any moment now.

 

 

ISAAC

 

I always wondered

would Abraham really have killed

his own son.

The word "sacrifice" seems

the ultimate euphemism

especially when it was

the unwitting Isaac

who would have made the ultimate one.

I asked my father once

what would he do

if God requested a similar act of him.

He just muttered something about

"Old Testament" and left the room.

I figure God has moved onto

more reasonable demands these days:

church on Sunday, adhering to commandments.

Besides, with some fathers I've met,

dispatching an ungrateful brat

could feel too much like a blessing.

Still, I can't get that image out of my mind:

Isaac's head on the rock,

Abraham about to swing the sharp blade down,

God at the last moment staying his hand.

Some days, it was a vivid illustration

of the ongoing quandary of religion.

Other times, it said something

about how fathers are with sons.

I could be thankful that there's a New Testament,

a Jesus with the loving face of God.

or relieved that I had no children.

 

 

BOUNDARIES AT THE FAST FOOD RESTAURANT

 

A school bus parked

and out stepped two adults

and six autistic children.

The guys behind the counter

obviously recognized them,

joked between themselves

until the group came through the door

and their faces went all solemn.

 

The other diners looked up for a moment

but then continued munching on their meals.

They didn't wish to be coerced into sympathy.

One of the children let out some kind of wail.

A middle-aged couple closed their ears

by lowering their heads even more.

 

Meals in hand, the group went looking for a table.

The prayers inside that restaurant were palpable  -

"Please God, not near me."

They made such a scuffling sound finding seats.

And when the kids spoke,

the words came out loud and misshaped.

Food was unwrapped excitedly.

They'd barely sat when one boy had already

spilled ketchup down his Charlie Brown T-shirt.

A girl tried to eat a bagel.

Her face was soon lathered in cream cheese.

Another sang a nursery rhyme in between bites of fries.

Her run of notes approached strangulation pitch.

 

The children conversed, sometimes happy,

sometimes angry, in their own private language.

Napkins floated to the floor.

A bun was dropped. Tomato slices took flight.

The adults tried to empower their charges

as best they could.

Mostly their job was to make sure

they kept within the boundaries of suitable behaviour.

Those boundaries sat at every other table.

They contained none but themselves

And they were squeezing tighter.

 

 

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL AND THE DRAGON SLAYER

 

My mother sold matchsticks on a street corner

            in the bitterest chill of winter.

My father was a knight, a dragon slayer,

            a rescuer of women in towers.

 

But when my mother had accumulated enough pennies,

            she opened a matchstick store,

            and had heating installed.

My father took on one dragon too many,

            suffered serious burns over half his body

            and, to make matters worse,

            he fell when scaling a castle tower,

            broke his right leg in two places.

 

After years of selling other people’s product,

            my mother opened her own matchstick factory,

            franchised out a number of new stores

            though she kept the original for nostalgia’s sake.

My father was invalided out of the age of chivalry,

            stayed in the house mostly,

            saw no one, spoke to nobody,

            except for the nurse my mother’s money paid for,

            spent his days snapping matchsticks in two.

 

                       

SURVIVAL TACTICS

 

In an old cemetery

behind the new pharmacy,

enough Abners and Maisies remain

to justify a rubbing.

It’s the last stand

of the dead of the 19^th century.

 

Plaques on the outside of houses

have it better.

Current residents polish up

the original owner’s brass.

With cleaning fluid and a rag,

history gets personal.

 

The general store is shuttered

but the man who built it up from nothing

is still there above the doorway,

holding on with flaky paint.

 

The ballfield does its inspiration prouder.

The first guy to play ball

is iron-embedded in the entrance gate.

 

The library boasts a few dust-covered volumes

of town records.

There are plenty of births, deaths and marriages

in undigitized ink.

 

A name here, a name there,

survival is tenuous.

But short of living forever,

this is as good as it gets.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.