Poems
by Allison Grayhurst

 

 

Star

 

I think if I was a trillion-year-old

star blazing, always in deep transformation,

pulling planets into my orbit and asteroids

and the tips of angel-wings, bypassing,

touching, fearless, as bright or brighter

manoeuvring with unexpected harmony

 

then remembering would be easy - to see

the past as a sealed perfection, no matter

how apparently flawed, to see myself

as the same

 

then I would vibrate in a place where there is

no guilt, no lack, and all I do

and all I can not do would be set as

a rock on a shore -

full of dents, instructions and veins

of rich (sometimes glowing) colours inside

 

it would be enough to be that rock

or that star - one thing, whole,

changing without struggle,

combusting or eroding

without attachment, without pain.

 

 

 

 

 

Slowly the builder builds

 

but the miracle-maker is quick -

enormous change, dreamt-of-no-longer.

The end-result is a shock of grace

and the depths of God’s power displayed,

gifted for no deserving reason but love

and the faith that the receiver

has in that love, welcoming that love.

 

Mustard seed blooming in seconds,

why look under the blankets or walk

the steady path? Matter is a wave dipping

flowing, curvatures actualized,

only incrementally understood.

Sticky fields surrounding,

demanding interaction

as the master-builder alters creation in a blink,

with compassion stronger than a stormy sea,

stronger than death or deformity,

strongest still in the peace

of utter surrender, after cellular breakdown,

after defeat, after defiance is broken,

this love floods like a wind, gathering velocity,

gathering together proportionally all things

perfect, flawed, absolutely divine.

 

 

 

 

 

Molasses-dream

 

The fighting blood,

and the power

of broken bones mending.

Flip the unknowing cause of famine

and feed on faith like a summer’s feast

of fruit and nuts accepted as a birthright.

Change is incremental, even the change

of death takes time to incorporate into

the nervous system, slowly inching into reality,

sometimes healing in its wake, always scarring.

 

Bedrooms are emptied, new homes are formed

with the hope of comfort and forever.

Prophecy has landed on my roof, digging under

the shingles to nest and brood.

I accept the brisk cold. I accept a soft landing.

Love never gives up

and that’s the most important part of love

I have ever understood.

 

 

 

 

 

Lift

 

If I stay under ice

in a house as vast as the sea,

cut off from the sun,

I will bloat up on anxiety’s quickening,

gaining nothing but a heaviness uncurable

and inevitable as iron-core gravity, heating.

 

So I will lift myself up onto the sides of

the cracked ridges, gaze at the clouds overhead

and write my new name in the air.

 

Breathing is simple like God’s grace is simple

and only needs to be received to be seen.

My body is a dream spinning in thirst,

banging into hard edges as it seeks

satisfaction, snatched from divinity in its

death-spread, doomed to be finite and always

hungry.

 

I love the clear riser, the way forward

when there is no way to be found.

I will be the clear riser,

rising like a bubble-balloon, escaping,

carried by the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

Hubris

 

Steady as logic dictates

the truth of superstitious rotation

and effect, unmasks the mystic

trappings of a fated existence ritual

locked into the spinning orbs lightyears away,

locked like us to the gravity of the sun,

but no more, and if it is more,

the intricate complexities of small stirrings

would never be understood or solid enough

to set the tone for the day or for a season.

Dead art that does not evolve with knowledge

is blind art, is needed

by the desperate to feed the need

for false certainty.

 

The veil is lifted, unveiling

a more magnificent mystery, movement,

igniting the joy of undetermined, humble

exploration.

 

 

 

 

 

Milky Way

 

Rare soot

lengthening into

the vacuum stream

between stars.

Even more rarified lull in

ghostly formations

merging on the horizon,

thicker where they combine,

overlapping bubbles, hotter

through the closed door.

 

Nested motions

with no net-motion

overall, a scribble

undulating, still frozen

in this position

of constricted movement.

 

Blue shifts, red shifts,

equal, loosely wrapped

transient by compression

wave of rotation

a surprising conflict,

rising instead of slowing,

no sharp edges,

rotation stays high

at the visible edge

and beyond, plunging

expectations only

collected by elimination of

violence that proceeds

the sucking hole.

 

But not so much the mystery matter

floating in free space,

a momentary amplification

that has ruled out house-objects,

tiny objects

because there is no diffused dim glow

only weakling interaction

of symmetric twins

mine shafts

ultra pure

mass but no light

in the space between.

 

A dramatic effect

a thin gruel

deviant light, distorted

delicate filament clusters,

ragged dusty lanes

chopping the whole field.

 

A congestion of information,

ingesting matter, and again

the whole of the swirling stars.

 

 

 

 

 

Ghost

 

Gone, dripping

down the drain

after a cut.

Gone, the sweet flavour lingering

of maple syrup on the tongue.

Gone like democracy from a land

conquered by a tyrant.

Gone like inspiration from the crushing

overtones, undertones, all-tones

of relentless grief.

Gone like a love that was once unique

as it was necessary, stretching her grace

over my home, my family and my faith.

Gone, and I have gone with it into a blackhole spin -

dream, here, there, no commitment, no connection

to the divine or otherwise, endless spin, inertia.

 

Here, a film between myself and life,

watching a screen, moving, getting involved

by remembering how, feeling none of it really counts,

feeling myself only playing a worn-out part.

Here, things I knew before

become nothing I know now, vulture-feeding

off my past false understanding, landing

in a heap of wet sawdust, taking forever

to make a move so I don’t make any move

and just sit, watching, not even waiting anymore.

 

Gone like she is gone,

unreachable, ephemeral,

somewhere else.

 

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