in parentheses

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly.

J. Grey has been previously featured on IP.

---

A LIFE DRIVING WEST

Driving west,
he expected the prim houses,
red barns, tall silos, yellow tractors,
the seas of golden grain,
to always be there.

But his face drooped mournful
at the sudden rawness of the land,
the occasional small farms,
with their futile fields,
ramshackle dwellings,
a wilderness of the dissolute
and the scattered.

The view played in
to what he was feeling.
The plenty gave way
to the little life had to offer.

Soon, there was no more soil,
just rocks.
And each one had his face painted on it.

ON THE BEACH IN ROUGH WEATHER

For your troubles,
you get an almighty roar,
and a constant wave plow
furrowing the sand
you walk on.

The foam is frothing at the mouth.
The moon is working the tides
like a chain-gang overseer
with a bullwhip.

You like to feel the flush
of wind desperate
to get out of ocean’s way,
swirling seaweed
at your hamstrung feet,
pebbles and shells
strafing your knees.

Hair blown,
steps unsteady,
drenched
and shaking with salt…
a power far beyond you
gets so up close.

ODE TO BREAD

If the earth were food,
it’d be bread.
Except I didn’t make the Earth
but I’m heating the milk,
stirring the yeast,
beating in the flour,
greasing the bowl,
punching and shaping the dough,
baking the loaves
until they’re double their size.

If one food
could be an element
it’d be bread.
Except it’s nowhere
on the Periodic Table
but it’s cooling,
brown and fluffy,
on mine.

ON A TWILIGHT OCCASION

Summer twilight,
the last gleams
are alive with midges.,
dessert for swallows,
the appetizer of bats.

Day, trapped between the trees,
is set upon by shadows
by the whims of hedges,
as lawns are dyed black
and the brightness of
the front path’s squares
stagger back and forth
from gate to front door.

Traffic is inevitably
headed homeward,
headlamps beating back
darkened streets,
squirting light on the road ahead.

The drivers,
like the passengers in the bus,
are setting suns themselves,
sinking down into
what their hands are doing
and their heads aren’t thinking.

As dusk turns house shingles
into black carapace,
some keep watch on patios
under the auspices of sips of wine
while others, propped up in sickbeds,
struggle not to implicate
the day’s dimming in their own.

Street-lamps flick on,
keep the sidewalks ghost-free.
The town park is small enough
to be content with its new shapes —
a bandstand that’s a sitting giant,
a playground, now a sculpture garden
of trolls and ogres.

That’s when I appear,
strolling the walkway
that follows the fading stream,
as my senses lose interest
in the silence, the lack of visibility,
and my imagination
welcomes me at every step
with the warmth of a devilish river monster
or a cruise down voluptuous waters
to Samarkand’s fabled silks.

The revelry and reverie of night
will start up soon.
Some will embrace it.
Others retreat.
I prefer to do both at once.
And right here –
solitary confinement you might say –
solitary I agree with
but confinement is an illusion.

Really, it’s a perfect rendering
of an unspoiled lost place,
of moments that are not quite time,
where I evade the pressure
of being who I am.
It’s so dark and yet not of a darkness.
Something must be lambent
in all this.
Why not me?

---