Poems
by John Grey
January Morning In Suburbia
Its the morning after
a heavy snowfall.
Her mother cooks breakfast
in the small blue and white kitchen.
Her hair is bound up and away from a face
that emerges now and then
from hissing clouds of steam.
The Labrador spies a squirrel
through the icy window.
His own survival is assured
but still he growls
at a creature whose life depends
on foraging in unpromising mounds.
Her fathers outside,
shoveling the driveway,
making mountains either side
of the unearthed car.
Her brothers in his room
playing video games.
Shes sitting on the edge of her bed,
head bent over her phone,
texting a girlfriend.
Its a typical Saturday morning
in January.
Its a still life
with lots of movement.
That Sea Smell
The view from the dunes
is as it was when I was twelve years old.
Those could even be my old footprints
squelching deep into the sand.
A gust of freedom
blows off the whitecaps,
through the whistling seagrass.
Here, my thoughts,
accustomed to dealing
in keyboards, monitors,
printouts and spreadsheets,
embrace infinite numbers
content to go uncounted.
The perfume that rises to my nostrils
is a scent preserved, by brine,
from my childhood until now
and it moves me powerfully.
Sights and sounds
my imagination has reproduced
over the years.
But odor is the one thing
that does not work with memory.
I need to be in this exact place
for my senses to catch up with it.
So I gladly inhale something long forgotten.
Ill remember it fully for as long as I am here.
Dawn Light
dawn pulls back
the curtain,
marks the place
where eyes open
it embellishes rooftops,
finds common cause
with bedroom windows
it has escaped
from darkness
not to control
but to enlighten
so land goes to bed a shadow
and awakens as a pasture
my first few moments
of consciousness
are spent thinking about that
Taxi Driver
I was driving taxis,
second cousin twice removed to the real money,
some of it touching down occasionally
in the rear-view mirror, furtive and nervous,
or talking on the phone.
The tips weren't big but occasionally,
my curiosity about people was showered
in silver, details of other lives
that jigsaw-ed into mine,
created some kind of momentary whole.
I even took that back to our relationship,
drove taxis in and out, up and down
for those times you hailed me down,
bamboozled me with another version
of your story.
I never did find myself
but I learned the short-cuts.
Didn't lose myself in you either
but I got you where you were going
once or twice.
Cushioned
Six months go by,
and amnesia
begins to set in,
her face is not quite
as memorable,
the love not as life-defining.
He burned the letters,
even the poems,
and the photographs
are out of sight
in case he might someday
wish to kiss another.
At least, the guilt has receded.
Its more like an old forgotten password
than claws around his heart.
Hes tidied up the apartment.
Its no more a pig sty.
And hes tidied himself up
to suit his surrounds.
The couch is still there,
the one that he found her stretched across,
a hour beyond that dreaded moment
when she forgot how to breathe.
But the more he rests his body on that sofa,
the more comfortable it gets.
An overdose fades in time.
A cushion is the way forward.
Copyright reserved. Please do not reproduce without consent.