Poetry: Selections From John Grey
The
Miracle
At
sixty-two,
he’s
asking for a miracle –
a
woman.
It’s
been forty years
since
his last one.
And
now
the
solitude is
catching
up with him,
no
longer a comfort,
more
an accusation.
He’s
in the mood
to
please somebody.
Pleasing
himself
has
run its course.
He
wants another.
A
person who looks back at him
and
is not a mirror.
She
can pick out his faults.
She
can make his decisions.
As
long as she scrapes off his rust
when
needed.
As
long as she stays.
And
if she doesn’t come
he’ll
drink another cheap bottle,
watch
paint peel from the ceiling,
listen
to the radiator cough
like
his late father.
The
miracle isn’t the woman,
It’s
surviving the wait.
In
My Morning Zone
I
turn right at the abandoned gas station.
Then
take a left down a narrow street
between
two burnt-out tenement buildings.
Outside
Louie’s bar,
two
drunks are pushing at each other
in
some kind of slow-motion scrap.
A
guy walks a pitbull.
Two
young girls chalk up
a
hopscotch game on the sidewalk.
I
stop at Eddy’s for coffee and a bagel.
He
tells me, for the hundredth time
this
year, that he’s thinking of
selling
the business, going down to
Florida
to live with his widowed sister.
Outside,
the pitbull pisses on a lamppost,
the
drunks collapse into a hug,
the
girls skip their chalked squares.
Same
as yesterday.
Same
as the day before.
You’d
be surprised as to how much sameness
there
is in the world.
But
there’s always sell out,
pack
it in, go where it’s warm.
Maybe
Eddy’s right.
A
guy wiping down a countertop
with
a rag usually is.
Cab
Driver
the
last passenger
of
the night
runs
off into
inner
city streets
without
paying
cab
driver
watches
the guy
slip
around a corner
the
dashboard fare
reads
21.50
that’s
how much
it
costs the cabbie
to
see a man disappear
The
Two, Together Yet
the
distance between
the
woman and her lover
was
once a hair
then
the handle of a rake
followed
by a diving board
and
then the width of a swimming pool –
need
I go on –
we’re
talking planets by this –
he’s
Jupiter
she’s
Uranus
and
yet
he
waves
she
nods
they
continue on their separate orbits –
home
is an apartment
just
off Broadway -
it’s
small enough
to
encourage intimacy
but
with enough space
to
allow for gas giants
Arisen
just
before dawn
you
rise and
so
not to wake me
walk
high
and
soft
and
deliberate
like
a wading bird
though
you’re
no egret
out
to catch a fish
you’ve
nabbed one already
he
is snug
beneath
the sheets
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, the Bayou Review and Plainsongs.