Poetry: John Grey

John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

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THE OCEAN CALL

The sea is wide and cobalt.

Beach stretches for miles.

No shadow can reach this far.

Sun slices through thin cloud

like a blinding blade,

cuts into the flesh

of the two of us lying together

on soft, squelching sand,

wet toes, salty lips, grains in ears,

ever mindful we are nothing much

and this is the great outdoors.

Gray laughing gulls,

wings wide against spraying breakers

riffle through bobbing shells.

Pelicans motor

down flaunting fish highways.

A ball bounces within hearing distance.

A plastic bucket clicks against a child's knee.

Pages of a book turn.

Hands slap oil into flesh.

The insistent call:

come down to the sea.

Within these waters

float the blueprints of the body.

Blood's in and out of rock-like bones.

Hearts rise and fall like tides.

***

PLOP PLOP

High branches of the snow-smothered 

fir drop their load on the boughs below,

that tremble on contact,  can’t possibly

hold up the extra weight, bend down,

allow the excess to drop off, batter the

older limbs which, in turn, do the same 

to the already white-stacked roots.

There should come a time when 

ground-level protests – enough is 

enough,  I can’t take any more. But the 

earth is life’s gatekeeper. It always 

makes welcome what cannot be helped.

***

DAN’S FACTS OF LIFE

Dan was eleven

when he first saw a calf being born.

And he's never forgotten

the sight of his father's hands

and half his arm disappearing from view

as he reached into the womb,

untangled limbs, found the hooves, and began to pull.

His father encouraged him

to join in that natal tug-of-war

but Dan admits that he was too stunned

by what he witnessed

to latch on to the man's words.

And he couldn't help staring

at the cows dumb immobile face

as his father almost sweated blood

pulling the newborn clear.

At the sight of the calf rolling in straw,

Dan became less stupefied, more giddy,

fascinated by the tiny creature

fresh from a treacherous tug and lug

down a birth canal.

The mother licked the newborn,

encouraged it to stand

which, after five or stumbles,

it finally did, attached itself to a teat.

Dan saw many a birth after that,

some as easy as swatting flies with a tail,

others difficult to the point of

a still-born baby or a mother's death.

It didn’t make a man of him,

just glad he wasn’t a woman.

***

BEG TO DIFFER

You wonder if she’ll love you

now she’s dying. You’re a part 

of her, after all. But, then again,

so is her kidney. And there hasn’t

been any kind words, of late, 

in that direction. But if you sit

bedside, attend to her needs, 

listen to all her muckraking 

of the past, she might find room

in her heart. Why not? It’s

been unoccupied for years.

You play cards and let her win.

You comb her hair and 

complement its softness.

But she grumbles. She complains.

She calls you by your sister’s name.

Then, when it’s time to leave,

you bend down to kiss her cheek,

but she turns her head away.

The nurse says, “She’s not herself.”

You beg to differ.

***

DANNY’S PRECIOUS MEMORIES Page One

So which are precious?

Forget childhood.

His old man saw to that.

There was that time

he took a swing at his stepfather.

But the guy ducked his head.

Danny’s right cross missed.

At thirteen, he stole a car,

took it for a joyride.

Not much joy to it though.

He wrapped the vehicle around a pole.

Forget school.

What about when he first met Jeannie?

His ideal.

But he wasn’t hers.

So he got Marcie pregnant instead.

Married the young woman

then broke her jaw

a month after the wedding.

That’s a memory 

that takes pot shots at him even now.

Hardly precious.

The time he and some buddies

held up the gas station

could have been a candidate.

The guy pissed his pants

when Danny shoved a pistol in his face.

The cops caught up with them

before they’d gone three blocks.

There’s always something stops

the past from being prized.

There were the times his missus

brought the kid to see him

in the correctional institute.

But the bars between 

took the shine off that.

As did the divorce papers 

a year later.

And the time some guys broke his arm

in the prison shower. 

He got out eventually.

That should have been a winner.

Except life outside and inside

were working from the same confining playbook.

***

DANNY’S PRECIOUS MEMORIES Page Two

His ex and the kid had moved away.

Even his buddies stayed clear.

He shacked up with a woman

who was as footloose and frayed 

as he was.

She ended up stabbing him 

with a breadknife.

Their time together didn’t exactly

scuff up any pearls of recollection.

And so he’s sitting here,

in the kitchen of a third floor 

tenement apartment,

looking down at a neighborhood

of hookers and junkies,

muggers and overflowing trash,

conmen and rats. 

Finding those precious moments

is like looking for a fingernail clipping

in a sausage factory.

Even if you find it,

that still don’t make to precious. 

***

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Setu, July 2024