THREE MOONS
The moon is where she learns
indifferent, ineffectual shine.
Even the walls, the ceiling,
are off somewhere in the dark,
attending to their own business.
There's a clock,
another moon,
closer and ticking,
but still so far.
A fairytale saw a giant cut down,
The small are capable of anything
and need not fear.
Even her dream
can't harm her.
If not her sword,
there's always the unicorn.
For a time her mother
sits beside the bed,
the cadence of her breath
like knights on horses.
But then she leaves
as moons must,
if not the sky, the clock-face,
then the far away room next door.
THE LAKE WHERE IT ALL HAPPENED
In
the beginning
would
you believe me
I
was neither one thing or another
if I
told you –
image?
the name
of the swimmers –
identity?
the
edge of the lake -
time
grew shallow,
I
was my own
mossy rock
dark well
the
shallow and the deep –
no
hankering
just
another native
of
the morning world
blue
grass and its best wishes –
to
the fur of the skin
what exactly is memory?
where
small frogs leap
what does it matter?
a
lake of silence is far-off history
just echoes uncurled
a boat tethered to nothing but
laughter –
I
stretch out carefully
from the beginning to a tree
cool pasture
girl-woman just setting out
watching
for the teeth
the
toes
the
bull and the distant barn –
headful
of hair
pasture
sun glares
nubs of wildflowers
hum falling leaves
my
ally beside the water
my
drunkenness in the margins
a prodigal self-portrait
by the time bright sky gets to it -
HER REWARD
For three hours flight time,
a smile never leaves her lips.
The pilot speaks so warmly
through the PA.
The stewardess is politeness in excelsis.
The young woman next to her
starts up a friendly conversation.
Back home, no one under forty
even knows she’s there.
The coffee may be blah
but it tastes of ambrosia
for having been brought to her seat.
And with peanuts on the side.
She stares admiringly at the package
for an age before opening it.
The napkin, with the airplane logo.
she stuffs in her purse for a souvenir.
No lines of stress in her cheeks and brow.
No worries when the airplane
hits some minor turbulence.
In fact, she laughs,
just like she did when her father
lifted her above his head,
and ran around the room.
She thumbs through a magazine,
passes around, to her immediate circle,
a photograph of her latest grandchild,
proudly declares to all willing to listen
that her children are paying for this trip.
Three pampered hours there and back
in a steel tube,
ten days with her brother in Omaha –
she can put into words
all that her life’s been leading up to.
LIPS THAT TOUCH WATER WILL NEVER TOUCH MINE
.
Water's too enigmatic for my taste.
Pour, drink, urinate, boil off 'into clouds, rain...
all process flow, rush or crawl
over stone, rampart, wall,
and then into ponds, lakes, rivers,
whirlpool, gurgle, and strange rainbow end
to a storm's wild ride.
Give me alcohol instead.
It doesn't flood spaces. Just touches here and there.
Soft but dazzling. Personal.
A finite rapture of sips and steadying
But water, it scatters on contact,
ripples for no reason, brims, breaks, broadens.
It would drown a man as much as float him.
There's lithe water on the rooftops,
cavernous water in the earth's guts.
It purrs at the back of my sleep.
On rain-swept avenues, it sloshes about my ankles.
Can't have a courtyard
without its dark masks sweating the stone.
Or a night sky without encroaching nimbus
So give me a fountain I can control.
Not these bottomless wishing wells.
These gamboling horses of white foam.
The enamored suck of drenched air.
The green anchor of the planets suckling grasses.
The shambling crystal arch of drizzle.
The splinter heal of every drop
that an instant shatters and repairs.
And forget oceans. Where's the compassionate shark?
The forgiving ship-wreck?
I prefer the opaque solitude of barrooms
to the sleek transparence of the giddy beaches.
How low does your Davey Jones go?
My whiskey trance scales the heights.
And I need no bridges, no ships,
no nets to level out the disparity
between the schools of fish and the one of me
You take the hurricanes.
Give me the winds of a slow closing door.
You seep through the rotted rafters
I'll climb the stairwell of my soul, eyelids uppermost,
my nerves nibbling like horses do hay.
Give me exuberance, not permanence.
If the world must be a leaking tap
I'd rather hear the jukebox
in my encampment where fiddle plays
arpeggios of light and shade
along the banisters of bottles,
and kettle drums clap
the cheery landslide of liquor
down gulping throat.
Not those mountainside water gallops
in the blurry mists of Spring
Not trenchant Mississippi and Niles on maps.
The thing is God hasn't stopped flooding the earth
and I'll be Noah wherever I can find a niche,
a dry skin, a fireplace, the smell of fermentation,
peanuts in a bowl, even the bristling cadence
of yesterday's spit and polish
In a glass, does liquid sink not spangle.
In my mouth, lips play a harmonica of peace.
Old men join me,
at the back of the flashing neon sign.
Never seen a one of them drink water.
Sure, some fished, but out of revenge most likely.
Such is the cruel spread of the watery world,
the circular liquid cosmos.
The short dry life may be feared
But wet infinity is dreaded.
DESCENDED TO EARTH
I don’t know you, angel,
a messenger from God
alighting on the far bank
or just a large white-winged bird.
I’ve been hiking towards evening
on trails where leaves batten down
and. in fading light,
birds float as much as fly,
and the pond foams at the edge
of underwater diadems
And everything else is black
or near black,
except for this magisterial bird….
not Gabriel…egret, maybe?
a crane?
Or a feathered seraph,
beaked spirit,
hunting in the crepuscular hours,
where shadows sprout,
the last thing descended
John
Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World
Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two
Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through
Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and
Doubly Mad.
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