Poems
by John Grey

 

The Man Who Can No Longer Hear

 

The sound was here

when I was ten.

But today,

it's nowhere to be heard.

 

But I've held down a job in that vacuum.

I've made friends with my hands.

The sub-titles on my television screen

describe noise to me.

 

And I have a lover.

I touch her gently.

Her mouth opens

but nothing comes out

I have to rely on her face,

her body, for any and all responses.

 

Thankfully,

Katy is everything

sound used to be

 

 

 

 

 

Local Color

 

There they are,

strung along

the barb-wire of a fence,

 

Moose and Clay

Seth and Larry…

 

two chewing,

one whistling,

one just staring at

the mountains in the distance –

 

been there all summer

most like it

 

like the grapes that

don’t get picked

because they’re rotten –

only these grapes

are mostly lazy -

 

wind’s picking up,

October’s on its way -

 

“anybody got a cigarette?”

asks Clay –

 

he’s not holding out

for an answer.

 

 

 

 

 

Watering

 

I am a solitary figure in my backyard,

holding onto a hose whose nozzle

 

sprays a bed of heat-wilted flowers.

I must seem like God to those thirsty

 

petals and stems but my thoughts are

in a different place than heaven,

 

as I contemplate the bills coming due

and an imminent in-law visit.

 

Like when it rains, the garden’s

sudden sustenance is incidental not designed.

 

I am balancing numbers in my head.

I am looking for inoffensive words to draw on

 

when offensives ones are spoken in my direction.

And, all the while, water flows, plants drink

 

heartily and flowers can get on with life.

The bills, once paid, will leave me chipmunk poor.

 

The version of myself, after the in-laws depart, will

be of the tired and drained and totally defeated variety.

 

Maybe I should concentrate solely on this watering.

I’ll be a better man if that is all I do.

 

 

 

 

 

The Noises And I

 

A noise awakens me on Wednesday mornings -

the school buses have met their stentorian match

in the behemoths of trash pickup.

 

Not even screaming kids can come anywhere near

the decibels of the grinder truck, as every fallen branch,

fast food wrapper, chicken bone, fish head, cereal box,

 

is milled on the spot into suburban American chop suey;

and then there’s the recycler, where every mayonnaise jar

must come in clanging contact with all beer bottles

 

and soup cans or the guys on board are not doing their jobs;

the kids don’t stand a chance, nor do their big yellow wagons,

not even the one with gears that gnash like grandpa’s teeth.

 

I can sleep through the school routine – sometimes, in my

dreams, I’m back there myself – the real thing just adds ambience.

Thursdays are a different matter – this time, it’s the street

 

sweeper that jolts me out of bliss – sure, its brushes are soft, barely

more corporeal than wind – but it’s the way its sound slips under

the boisterous boys and girls, maintains a level, just above silence.

 

My subconscious listens despite itself, expects nothing in that

particular wave-band and, once occupied, it may as well be a garbage

truck.  You see, I’m ruled by expectation. Every so often, it abdicates. 

 

 

 

 

 

Checkerspot

 

It knows its meadows, this checkerspot,

fluttering from flower to flower

of white turtlehead, its body a black

exclamation point, breeze spreading

wings wide, gracefully pleating that

chessboard-pattern, the trailing orange rim.

 

It doesn't bother with the city park,

the shadow of the abandoned mill,

that brown curdle of a stream.

It wants nothing to do with the

rusty junked car or the syringes

or the condoms or the graffiti scrawl

across the belly of the busted leap frog.

 

At the sun's coaxing, this butterfly bursts

from larval web fully formed and feeding,

its universe scaled by a dozen of my strides

but with nurture and support enough

for many a cycle from egg to imago.

 

I had to drive by that park to get here.

Some kids were hanging out.

Hollow-eyed. Listless. Shabby clothes.

Foul mouths. Bored down to their second-hand

sneakers Not a butterfly between them.

 

 

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