THE HEART OF MY MATTER

 

My love is sluggish,

crawls up in dark corners

where it won’t be so easily seen.

For it fears exposure.

It’s even terrified of the warm

that dwells within itself.

 

For the longest time,

my love was a bird on a branch

freely trilling.

Then it was a salesman going door to door.

Now it’s like the least likely suspect

in a mystery novel.

It may be guilty

but the neutral observer

will gravitate to a more likely perpetrator.

 

My love is here – I can see it –

in this man’s face in the mirror.

But, whenever there’s an audience,

it’s like a magician

whose disappearing routine

has become his life story.

 

My love is tenacious,

I’ll give it that.

It can cling to a wall like a praying mantis.

It could live down between the floorboards

for a thousand years.

It just doesn’t like company.

Is that so wrong?

 

Every now and then,

a woman says that she returns my love.

It’s a wonder I don’t confuse it with a library book.

Actually, I did once but the overdue fines became intolerable.

 

THE MIDDLE SEAT

 

We strapped ourselves into an airplane

flying from Providence to Charlotte.

I sat on the aisle.

My wife took the window seat.

She stared at clouds.

My charge was to oversee

the other passengers.

We were both dressed casually,

middle-aged, harmless looking.

There was an empty seat between us.

For two hours, it remained unfilled.

Maybe it was never sold.

Or could be the ticket-holder

showed up late.

I drifted off to sleep once,

and could swear my head came to rest

on a shoulder –

a ghost perhaps? an invisible man?

My wife and I spoke occasionally

but entered into no real conversation.

We didn’t want to disturb the speculation.

 

 

KAYAK LESSON

 

“Balance is everything” the instructor keeps telling me.

My kayak awaits , bobbing on lake ripples.

Are you sure the word “Titanic” is not painted on its side?

 

He explains paddle technique, how to deal with wind,

where to point my head in relation to the bow.

There’s five minutes on calm surface technique.

And then a clinic on what to do should the waters roughen.

When does the band strike up, “Nearer My God To Thee.”?

 

Finally, life-jacket clinging to me like I’m its life-jacket,

I descend nervously into the wobbly “Largest Ship In The Fleet”,

manage to squeeze myself in the cockpit

as the trainer hands me my oars.

“Nothing to it,” he says.

So which of me is Lord Astor? Who is Molly Brown?

 

I stroke carefully like digging in sand with a shovel.

The kayak hugs the shore, occasionally caroming off the banks.

The instructor is pointing to the center of the lake

but that’s where the Lusitania went down.

I’m keeping to the shallows.

 

Eventually, I get the hang of it.

find a rhythm all my own.

1 urge my vessel along and it obeys.

We’re all of one, man and hull,

flesh and fiberglass.

Before long, I’m far from land,

beyond the shoals,

cruising the oceans of my mind.

I could do this forever.

But then ‘Time’s up,” screams my instructor.

Uh oh! Iceberg!

 

 

BEAST ENCOUNTER

 

Why me of all people?

The black shape glides through close-knit trees.

A crow shrieks. A rabbit scoots.

The trees, the brush,

clear quicker than a brothel

in a police raid.

 

“Fox,” I’m thinking.

But that heavy stomp

soon changes my mind.

As does the growl.

And the sense that

it’s no longer chilly air I’m breathing

but searing breath.

 

I back away.

But the creature knows I’m here.

Saliva-jawed hunger,

wild fear turned savage anger,

devour the space between us.

 

Something dark and furry lunges at me,

knocks me to the ground.

Struggle is useless.

Serrated teeth bite into my shoulder.

Blood spurts all over the greenery.

 

I black out.

That’s what saves me so I’m told.

The critter thinks I’m dead.

It’s a carnivore not a necromancer.

It backs away, leaves me there.

 

Bigger than a bear, I tell the ones who find me.

I figure it for some local legendary monster.

They reluctantly inform me that they don’t have one.

Well you do now, I tell them.

 

I tripped and fell into a ditch to be honest.

But to be honest is not to be heard.

 

NEAR THING

 

headlight glare,

rain battering the road

 

a sudden shape, a deer,

like something seen through

plate glass at night

 

deer urged on by hunger

to defy the weather

for the plush band of green

that binds the highway

 

deer unable to discern

splintered trees from tarmac,

gray showers bored

by headlamp

from tufts of grass

 

deer in a random crossfire,

a battering from above,

a screech of brakes

coming at them out of the dark

 

deer frozen

inches from their death,

finally brought back

from the edge of the abyss

by a silent,

broad swathe of light,

casting their near escape

in a strange, shimmering panorama

 

one by one

they trot daintily

back into the forest

 

one by one

is how the world apportions

risk and relief and rectitude

 

 

THE SHOW I PUT ON

 

Count me in, night.

I’m all aboard with shadows,

darkness, pitch-black relief

that comes with

the spinning of this planet.

 

It’s not the dinner smells.

Not even the gathering of family from all parts.

And certainly not the innocuous bulbs

and their hollow pretense that somehow

we can flick a switch

and control the light.

 

I’m no sun-worshiper.

I don’t glad-hand the moon either,

but I recognize something

in its round, glowing obedience

to the deep night sky.

 

I’m a fellow traveler.

Come evening,

I stand on the back porch,

stare out at the nothingness.

 

Cricket crackle, chill,

slight sideways shift in the air –

that’s all there is.

Devoid of detail,

robbed of explanation

the world must come to me for feeling

All is good, I tell it.

All is good.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Big Muddy and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Mudfish and Louisiana Literature.