THE RAT
He’s staring at you
like you’re a total stranger.
You’ve shared this house for twenty years
and he suddenly wonders what you’re doing here.
This is the same guy
for whom to see you was to hug you,
who sent you roses on non-birthdays,
and salvaged so many hard work days
by preparing candle-lit dinners for two.
And now, out of nothing more
than a bewildered look,
he says, “I don’t love you.”
But it’s not the man you know
who’s saying it.
The words sink in
but he doesn’t.
It’s first thing in the morning.
You’re making breakfast.
He’s rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
You freeze as if you’ve just seen a rat
scurrying across the kitchen floor.
The rodent disappears into a crack in the wall.
It’s just wide enough for a man to follow.
FROM UNDER THE TREE
I can lie beneath
and look up
like a Chinese poet
squeezing every outstanding
universal question
into the wind-rock of branches,
the shake of leaves,
the solid trunk,
and the bird life
that flutters in and out,
moments of brown
and blue and red
to stoke the living green.
God’s omnipotence –
check!
man’s insignificance –
check!
death and rebirth –
check!
sorrow and joy
and hope and despair –
check! check!
and double check!
A solitary leaf breaks free of a limb,
slowly cascades down through the currents,
lands softly in the spreading roots.
So it’s not just me who does these things.
A FLOODED TOWN
Last night’s rain
is this morning’s flood,
as the river shatters its banks,
and the land is all current.
Topography is up for grabs,
and water swarms tree and house alike,
finds least resistance
where cars park and people live.
Boats row down main street,
Cop helicopters circle like hawks,
People scramble up to second floors,
match the downpour sob for sob.
Townspeople set their boundaries
but sometimes those margins can’t cope.
The weather wasn’t in on the agreement.
The river can only do so much.
So property, once thought impregnable,
is there for the taking.
What can’t happen here happens.
Self-confidence is just more debris.
CINEMA ROMANCE
A woman in white,
Anna struts by,
Anna on her way
to the door of her Romeo,
passing by like a swan,
head high,
wings held tight to her thighs.
high heels barely touching concrete
as if the sidewalk is
a carpet in a courtyard,
Vogue ascetic,
eyes wheel around her,
roofs shine like diamonds,
likewise the towers and domes.
feast for the eyes
to which no one’s invited
but that man
on his balcony,
corn-fed hair,
eyes beaming sun-signals
from the world’s highest point,
backed by blue sky
and a tarmac of flowers,
Don Juan ascended,
his cock-crow, the wind,
his palace, wherever
he finds himself smiling,
and soon lovers meet,
galvanized, energized,
a burning love’s flashes,
then the sky’s kind: lightning,
drenching rain,
thunder, the great roll of the rest of us.
REFUGE
When I move in with others,
I am alone.
At night, bedded among them,
I am almost with these people
but where I’ve come from,
what I’ve done,
still keeps us apart.
For all this welcoming,
their eyes ask, “Who are you?”
And their proffered understanding
comes with a caveat,
“Why are you this way?”
These days,
my only people are the stars.
Cloud cover,
no matter how beneficent,
can’t possibly bring me closer.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.