A LITTLE LIGHT CONVERSATION
Late at night.
Storm, lashes the house.
Lights flicker.
Window panes shudder.
And yet,
I’m cuddled beside you on the couch,
your nearness like headphones
blocking out the world.
Is that thunder?
No it’s breath.
Is that lightning?
No, it’s touch by my reckoning.
Any moment now,
we could lose power altogether. .
So dark,
I’ll take a shine to you.
THE NEXT GENERATION
Okay,
you can have my watch.
My time
stops at the very moment
I hand it off to you.
And here,
take these sneakers.
I don’t plan
to ever walk again.
And grab this shirt
and trousers.
Why should I look my best
when my best is way beyond me?
And, finally, grab my pen.
I’m weary of words
and how they never quite
hang together.
You write the poems
from now on.
JULY MORNING AT THE CAMP GROUND
A duck sits on a rock
and lapping water
plays silent melodies
to the orange webbing
of its feet.
A child wakes
in a room overlooking
the bright lake.
He surfaces from
a dream of drowning.
The canoe bobs listlessly.
There’s a wind loose
in the trees.
Deer nibble at the edge
of the woods.
And a hawk rides
to the invisible upper floors.
A woman makes breakfast.
A man yawns.
Sun moves across the lawn
like a piece on a game-board.
It’s six a.m.
and the temperature
has wings.
— by John Grey
Copyright ©2023, by John Grey. All Rights Reserved.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, 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 California Quarterly..