Steel and Spice
Inch across
the bell-cups of lilies
in the dead oblivion
of decades of reality’s denial.
Inch into the sweetness
of a lilac’s centre,
nourished on imagination everytime
over the bite of bitter soup.
Gather the crows in your morning sky,
ask them to envelop you and then ask
their forgiveness.
Hiding your panic
in the promises of miracles, licking the acid
off of your skin to make for a good story,
for the belief in an undamageable surface.
Mistaking silk for bread, counting on
God’s kindness to come on the brink
of desperate need.
Will you now
be a slave to the feast of worms or
strip-mine until what little gold you find
feels like abundance?
Maybe you are safe, living in this
burning garden, protected with a poet’s peace
and by a faith that bypasses gravity’s consequences, but
has consequences and demands of its own – ones
you must live by and dedicate yourself to keep
turn a blind-eye to practicality,
and press all fear into a resounding prayer,
existing on the substance of
divine gifts, gifts that are final,
that have no price to pay except that you
leave yourself leaning, tied and planted only
to this holy dreamscape liberation.
Alchemy Completion
Far enough
to line the bed with
lavender clouds,
pull off the covers
and be entombed.
Fine sleep and soft
tenderness warming limbs,
wetting where it warms,
soon to cool – breathing like
singing, lines smeared into
unified devotion, matching frequencies,
backward, forward leading toward a tower
to leap off of, a bed to stretch on, sink into.
It is holy, mud-caked, drawn curtains torn
from their rod. It is thinking in intonations
and shades, a cascading buzz riveting from
bone to bone – two spliced and joining opposite halves,
a power equal in its mercy. Far enough,
just there, drawing breath on the summit, dissolving
boundaries in sensual elevation, far enough
continuing, collapsing, swallowed
into the pitching current.
Drift
Held still
like apple butter held
smooth on the tongue, catching
grief in a cage, on the surface
of a name – would it be
kissing or pinning a broken coat-zipper
together – once the fog has left is there
anything left to hold out for? Hold still for,
like a hooked fish releasing the struggle?
Being alive in the dream-state ambiguity,
meaning full then meaning naught and
how old are you?
Your horse, Dee, steady
in the sunlight, glinting a wild connectivity,
intelligence gleaming across a chestnut coat,
bowed head, permission to pet granted and then
sleeping in a stall, talking out loud when everyone else
had gone home. It was not a dream,
not until she was gone and then it was a dream
lost, and maybe never there.
People love their trees
the ones they think they own. But I never loved a tree like
I loved the willow tree in my Montreal backyard. I never
loved anyone who hadn’t died at least a hundred years
before I was born until
there was you, rounding up the stones from every table,
sitting alone only to stand up again before the seat
warmed, and ‘perfect’ made sense but nothing ever expected.
Dee and the willow tree. I left my body and flew
into the sun.
Why can’t I leave my body and fly into the sun,–
meals take care of,
sex and you, a beautiful summer star.
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three of her poems have been nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, and she has over 950 poems published in more than 400 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published twelve other books of poetry and seven collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series. In 2015, her book No Raft – No Ocean was published by Scars Publications. More recently, her book Make the Wind was published in 2016 by Scars Publications. As well, her book Trial and Witness – selected poems, was published in 2016 by Creative Talents Unleashed (CTU Publishing Group). She is a vegan. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
