"grayhurst" poems
Walking and turning
from the days of cous cous
to days of anything can happen.
Once sealed in summer - the four of us
on this ride, flourishing
under a brutal sun.
With September flushing in, hurling our
backdrop out of site, I wish for
the world to be a fountain of easy flow
and the hard mast made of stone to lie
flat and serve to stabilize our stance.
I know these things are
like necessary money
that we have so little of - but grace
is our bread and we face the drumbeat
whole - holding one another as doors opening, closing
lose their meaning.
Allison Grayhurst
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 4:13 PM UTC
The Day Is Like
.
The day is like
the day before
the worm arrived
in a jar at my doorstep.
Before I took the worm in
and fed it lettuce leaves and fresh water.
Before I had something to care for,
when loneliness was the largest difficulty around
and isolation pounded beneath my lids like
a cancer.
The day is tick tock and as slow as waiting
for that needed call to arrive.
I collect the noises from outside
but have nowhere to put them. I open my mouth,
but my voice has gone underground.
The sun looks in on me, but evades my skin.
I don’t hold my breath. I let it in and out.
I let the day be a blank wall.
And sometimes a day like today is like
an empty room and this empty room
is a treasure.
Copyright © 2006 by Allison Grayhurst
First published in "The Buddhist Poetry Review" 2012
Feb 12, 2020
Feb 12, 2020 at 5:58 PM UTC
better
.
Strips of clouds,
pink-grey like a snail snatched
from its shell. So many days I waited, waiting
like that snail for permanent protection, waiting
as an activity to delve fully into.
Nirvana was coming. I saw it traced
on the dated sidewalk, etched on the curvy luster
of a raccoon’s still spine and in the devotion
of the rock dove waiting for its one decided love.
Nothing was ever enough to saturate my yearning.
Even for a moment, to remember a time before birth,
before the furious fluttering engine ulcerated
my stomach lining, or before my sanity became a soft noise,
fading. I could hear it like a basic desire I was forced
to forgo - *** unquenched - like that but even
more. Like a crinkled cloth left on the subway floor,
I waited - dry, malformed, avoided.
The basement air is grooming me for an alien awakening -
maybe fluorescent, possibly ordinary, but better than
this sitting, tipping sideways on a broken chair.
Salt lamp on, a little fireplace or miniscule sunshine shining,
crumbling between my fingers, waiting
no more, moving at last
to another corner.
.
.
Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst
First published in "Dead Snakes" 2013
Feb 12, 2020
Feb 12, 2020 at 6:03 PM UTC
Morning Glory
.
Lost hideaway under the flesh
where birds of prey drink to the heart's
southward direction.
In liquid sleep a pocket is forming
of voices named in childhood years.
And from the beginning the miracle
sat on our shoulder like a butterfly,
though we never christened it as our own.
I am tossing back the weight of worldly waters
and things to be morally wounded for.
I give no more from the side of my mouth,
for the seductive shadow and the running crowd.
Plain as the path to heaven, I kiss the dread
and let it drift down sea. I open a room
where the light catches my breath.
I am breathing a morning glory.
.
.
Copyright © 2002 by Allison Grayhurst
.
.
Published in "Creative Talents Unleashed" August 2018
.
.
Feb 16, 2020
Feb 16, 2020 at 9:25 AM UTC