Feature Poet: John Grey
Good afternoon and welcome to another Feature Friday! Returning today with some great poetry is John Grey!
SUNSET IN THE ADIRONDACKS
Sun sinks
and shimmers behind the hills,
sets the trees on flameless fire
as, on the pond shore,
an egret steps slowly through
shallow pink water
and the night’s first owl,
with a low, subdued hoot
puts the field mice on warning.
Emerging night is an owl in kind,
swallows what my eyes have seen.
With barely a moon,
the natural world
is now shapeless and dark.
I must look elsewhere
for colors.
WHERE DAVE IS NOW
Somewhere between a fishing port
and abandoned gold rush town,
he hikes across an expanse of spongy tundra.
Rugged mountains rim all distances.
The roots of stunted trees tug at his feet.
He goes it alone because the landscape
would be so much less when distracted by another.
Thoreau found solitude to be the ideal companion.
He finds it the ultimate guide to the fuzzy hairs
of the Arctic willow, the vibrant poppy yellow,
the endless white-topped cotton grass.
Most comforts of civilization are forbidden here.
But, at night, by a fire, a harmonica, pressed to
his lips and played mournfully, is allowed.
BACK IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
For Eve, the choice was plain.
Go to bed with the man,
and the world will swell with generations to come.
Refuse him and it all ends here.
The forbidden apple was nothing really.
Say no and it's back to nibbling on grapes.
Bite down on that thing and what's the worst that can happen?
Expulsion? Exile in New Jersey?
It all came down to how naked
she was willing to get,
how far she would allow him to go with it.
Sweaty heavy body on me
or nothing but the sweet clean air?
Words of love
or words of aggravation?
Ungrateful children or loneliness?
A future for mankind or no future?
She opted for sex eventually.
It was new and fresh
and Adam didn't complain.
It's come down to us
as the snake and the juicy fruit.
It's not sin, I keep insisting.
It's an analogy.
MY BANKING ADVENTURE
I’m in the lobby of a bank.
But where I really am
is in the lobby of money.
That’s why the stanchions are brass.
The ropes are velvet.
The carpet is green.
I look up at the high ceiling,
stained glass windows,
and they’re very cathedral-like.
But that’s not Jesus on the Cross
so prominent on the far wall.
It’s the company founder.
He was never crucified though,
from what I hear, back in the depression
it was a close run thing.
I stand in line as I always do
where money is concerned.
The queue moves slowly.
Even the lowliest dollars and cents
take their time.
The teller is friendly,
looks at my withdrawal slip,
pretends he knows me.
Then he asks for ID.
Being known, apparently,
can only get a man so far.
Mine is a simple transaction.
I could have used the ATM.
But I prefer the human touch,
even when the one serving me
is only quasi-human.
In the background,
I can see the vault,
which is the true heart of this place.
The opened door is as thick
as five editions of Webster’s Dictionary.
When it’s shuttered I imagine,
cut off from their lifeblood,
all of these tellers, guards,
and loan people shrivel up,
and die in their cages,
at their desks,
or fall to the floor,
leaving just a corpse in fancy uniform.
Or maybe they just go home to their families –
the Washingtons, the Lincolns, the Hamiltons,
the Jacksons, the Benjamin Franklins.
AN ADONIS EMERGES
An Adonis emerges from the water.
No, not an Adonis, a magician.
He pulls a turquoise rabbit out of his top hat,
And all the sunbathers have retreated to their hotel rooms.
All except you
and this luminescent lapping of waves at your toes,
and the breeze from the sea
which is as much breath as it is wind.
There he is, someone everybody wants,
but who is yours alone to corral.
A life full of rabbits out of nowhere?
What can be better than that.
You don’t forget to sigh.
Or pinch your tanned flesh.
Or sing the latest love song on the radio.
You wonder if he’ll ever reach you,
as the ocean’s retreat pulls him back,
grips him up to the knee with foam.
But he’s a magic man.
He can do this.
He knows the ocean like a dolphin.
But with all that glowing horizon behind him,
how do you know you’re not hallucinating?
Thankfully, he’s becoming himself
in various degrees,
without the miracles,
but with a luster to make up for that.
He’s close now
though not as close as he will be
in a moment or two.
And wait, that’s not a top hat,
merely a mop of sandy hair.
And rabbit? You’re fooling yourself.
Not flesh and blood but fiberglass.
A surfboard with the fin of a friendly shark.
“It was awesome out there today,” he says.
He was awesome out there.
Now he’s with you. Above-average but human.
Oh well. Looks are sometimes extraneous
to inner belief.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.
