Poems
by John Grey
Ahead Of Themselves
These boys stare into early manhood,
but the pool reflects mere children.
Theres no stubble on the chin.
No red drunken eyes.
From this rippling mirror,
they want something older than themselves,
not what they look like
but what they think like.
But how unscarred the cheeks,
the brow, the throat.
Looking for self-respect,
they find nothing but the self.
Better look inward if theyre ever
to get ahead of themselves.
In the head, they can borrow
from fathers, older brothers,
of better yet, from the movies
fast cars, loose women,
oodles of money to spend.
The heart may keep them
as young as they are
but who goes looking there?
But then the boys start pushing
each other, sharing crass jokes,
cussing out classmates,
splashing in the water.
They revert to their own age.
Its happy to have them.
Visiting The Abandoned Country Graveyard
The stones are old,
the bodies below older still.
But not as old as the surrounding trees
or the earth that binds the bones.
An ancient couple stumble
through the rusty gate,
slowly make their way
along a weed-ridden path,
struggle to read
the faded names of the dead.
The wind whispers,
Youre new here,
arent you?
In A Strange Town
I stood there
on a Main Street sidewalk,
amidst an outbreak of life,
people walking briskly by me,
or darting in and out of stores,
or catching up with friends.
I glimpsed a face,
perfect in its delineation.
I heard a voice
soft and clipped.
They touched,
with unexpected light,
an instinct comatose in me
for far too many years.
This led to
once grounded feet
now in mid-air,
acceptance of my circumstances
unraveling.
Senses, I should have warned you.
I was young once.
Near Midnight, Maine Fishing Village
Near midnight, I stroll down by the waterfront.
Cold and warm claim the same territory.
Mist ensues. No moon. No stars.
I cant see the pier but can hear the
water rocking its foundations.
And the steel thump of a trawler against wood.
I find myself at the foot of the fishermans memorial.
Here there is the dead calm that those memorialized
on its plaque must have prayed for in their last hours.
I hear footsteps. Two drunken men, arm in arm,
stagger in and out of view. A solitary clip-clop follows.
Dense fog becomes a wraith at first,
then part woman, then the whole. She
does not speak. Her world is part-air part-water.
And the red rose in her hand is the
only color for miles. She kneels, places that flower
at the statues base, then rises, retreats
into her ghost form and then her nothingness.
Time for home now, I follow the lantern-like
house-lights up the hill. Something flies overhead.
Someone else passes me, unseen, unknown.
Once inside my cottage, all the sight and sounds
are personal. Floorboard creak. That blue wallpaper.
The scrape of a chair. The fireplace. The clatter of cups.
My life is not at odds with the fog rolling in.
No one I love was taken by the sea.
The Archaeologist
What kind of man does it take
to look out at nothing but a stretch
of bleak, heat-scorched desert
and see a city?
You could dig here for years
and find only more sand, more rock
or maybe some half-buried trash
from a recent camel caravan.
Even on your best day,
your moments of sweat,
your hours of grinding, sapping, labor,
might yield no more than
a pottery fragment,
a splinter of glass.
What kind of man does it take
to imagine a city
and find it's all desert anyhow?
No temple.
No tomb.
No bronze god.
No cat in onyx.
No pharaoh in gold.
Your dreams may provide
courtyards and markets,
coffins and jars,
bearded kings and veiled concubines
perfumes and spices,
muslin and palms...
but your sleep has never been arid,
doesn't have start with nothing
and burrow and excavate from there.
You pose with some locals,
face red, shovel in your hand,
barrenness on all sides,
make copies for family and friends
all over the world,
so they'll know the kind of man.
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