Allison Grayhurst- Three Poems

better

            Strips of clouds,

pink-grey like a snail snatched

from its shell. So many days I waited, waiting

like that snail for permanent protection, waiting

as an activity to delve fully into.

Nirvana was coming. I saw it traced

on the dated sidewalk, etched on the curvy lustre

of a raccoon’s still spine and in the devotion

of the rock dove waiting for its one decided love.

            Nothing was ever enough to saturate my yearning.

Even for a moment, to remember a time before birth, before

the furious fluttering engine ulcerated my stomach lining or before

my sanity became a soft noise, fading. I could hear it

like a basic desire I was forced to forgo - sex, unquenched - like that

but even more. Like a crinkled cloth left on the subway floor,

I waited - dry, malformed, avoided.

            The basement air is grooming me for an alien awakening,

maybe fluorescent, possibly ordinary, but better than

this sitting, tipping sideways on a broken chair.

Salt lamp on, a little fireplace or miniscule sunshine shining,

crumbling between my fingers, waiting

no more, moving at last

to another corner.

Blown

Blown like a grain of sand from a hollow twig.

It is beautiful to be blown.

Blown, into the winding forward thrust

where good happens with the movement

of each day and the fire-cracker burn

is a burn of celebration.

Carried through the radar-stream

into an easeful position where

the goal is getting nearer at a slow pace

and old patterns are disintegrating,

remembered but not renewed.

  

In Front

The line in front

is the line crossed

then left to rot under

the blazing day. The other side

is not to be feared but held

up like a delicate, appreciated toy.

The way out the door

is the door your father gave you when he died

and placed death’s rattle under your pillow

for the rest of your days. It is the door that won’t let you forget

how short a season life is.

The chain around your neck

is a chain of small but frequent miracles

that has sustained and held poverty at bay.

It is to be counted on when the last of the nectar

has been spilled on the rug and indifference consumes

the eyes of friend and kin like roundworm, there

even in the most difficult of barren

January days.

Bio:

Over the past twenty years Allison Grayhurst's poems have been published in over 120 journals throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and in the United Kingdom, including Parabola (summer 2012).  Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published nine other books of poetry and two collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was recently published by above/ground press December 2012.  She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children, two cats, and a dog. She also sculpts, working with clay.