Allison Grayhurst- Three Poems

This spirit is speaking

How much must I tell you,

with the dark sorcerers seeding my

potted plants and the old ways lost to

new ways yet unfound? How many times

must I twitch at the remembrance

of my cut throat in spring, contain my tears

in see-through plastic and continue to watch

the world go around, without a hiccup?

Acknowledge my fight, my flight into the wolf’s den.

I am not a whale, pure as garnet,

nor am I full of your grandeur

and the calm, strong dive down.

I have the blood of a prophet, but not the backbone.

Side-swatted into a long consuming grief

and the world is just the same: Brides and school bells.

How long must I explain? I have lost the contours

of my face. There is a man

on my kitchen floor deliberately, almost artistically,

shaving my fleshless bones. One by one, like that,

I am unformed.

Three days

since I was found,

panicked by my bed stand, calling out.

They put me under covers. They wet

my forehead but the fever was too bright inside of me.

Words were repeating.

Words were fireflies swarming my optical nerve.

They did not see the vision. They tried to stop my shaking.

They could not know that in the end,

I was left with a choice.

It was in my power to affirm or deny.

It was a light so potent, sharp as broken ice,

demanding. It was strength and perfection

without tenderness. How could that be love? They

were love - weeping for me, making promises

of togetherness for eternity.

Three days since I was found and they’ve never left my side.

In these arms that hold me, is a devotion

that comforts. I am better now. At last, I am called.

 

When we land

it will be like the pilot ejected from his plane,

finally touching soft ground.

It will be a handshake that means forever,

many seasons of ripe cherries -

an evergreen growing in the basement.

And all the stars will sing “kindness eternal”

like a summer beach without the crowds or looming sharks.

And happy will be our hands swinging from trees,

made whole again by the healing act of honest love.

We will walk briskly. We will be smiling. Miracles

are born from the emptiness and

the longing for ancient beginnings.

Blue Jade under the pillow.

Our animal shapes, rising internal.

When we land, we will smell the nightmares evaporating,

senselessness will have run its course.

And all that we lost, and all that we never had

will blend in beautifully, transcended

by this direction.

Bio: Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 650 poems published in more than 310 international journals. She has eleven published books of poetry, seven collections, seven chapbooks and a chapbook pending publication She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com