Poems
by John
Grey
Paper Cut
It’s a hazard of the job.
But it’s as rare as it is sudden.
It’s not like a razor cut
or an accident peeling potatoes.
Those are just
stuff that needs doing.
A slice of a chin or finger
is in keeping
with the dull, repetitive process.
But the paper cut strikes
in a moment of creativity.
A sudden “ouch”
when a brain bulb lights up.
A sharp critical retort
as I’m impressing myself
with something I just wrote.
It drips.
It can leaves a stain
on a poem that’s raw and revealing.
There’s nothing I can do about it.
Blood on the paper
meet blood on the page.
Pagoda
Up the hill from the duck pond,
a pagoda
there for no apparent reason
as any good pagoda should be –
I sit inside
look down at the gardens,
the trees, the tangle of brush,
some planned, some spontaneous,
as any greenery should be –
book on my lap,
a selection of Irish poetry -
Heaney, Yeats –
as inspiring in the touch
of its emerald cover
as it when being read,
the way poetry once was,
and can be and should be –
imagining Gale,
here beside me in the pagoda,
bearing her own slim volume of something,
her head on my shoulder,
sinking into each other,
for pagoda reasons,
for greenery reasons,
for poetry reasons,
each feeling sudden, warm,
evoking my most native of responses,
like sighing,
like clapping my hands three times.
The Grin
Playing the piano,
the child is padlocked
at the hands and feet,
obeying her most miniscule
muscle memory,
to the delight of her grinning mother.
Ah yes, the grinning mother,
the one who sends her only daughter
out into the wilds of music lessons
that her own upbringing left unexplored/
Playing the piano,
the child knows nothing of this,
merely fills the space provided.
is barely conscious to how
her fingers form notes
and those notes string together,
make melodies
sweet and powerful enough
to stretch her mother’s grin even further.
Ah yes, the grinning mother,
the one who’s forgotten how many times
she begged her own mother
for a piano and an hour or two a week
with Mrs. Granholme who taught so many
of the kids in the neighborhood.
Playing the piano
with an empty heart,
the child is unaware how much
she mimics the dream
of the shadow that falls across her face,
the shadow that is all mother,
that is all grin.
Ah yes, the shadow of the grinning mother,
as wide as the wall-to-wall carpet
but rolled up when the music stops.
The Life
Here I am again,
in a bar,
drinking beer,
shoving coins
into the only jukebox in town.
Let others watch
their muted hockey game.
I’m swaying, jerking, shaking,
to some good old rock and roll.
Here’s the difference –
NHL:
a cry goes up momentarily
whenever a goal is scored.
Jukebox:
a cry goes up
and stays there.
A Poet
As a kid,
I’d tell everybody
I was going to be
a fireman
when I grew up.
Yet now
I’m a poet.
Maybe
I changed my mind.
Or could it be
that I never grew up.
