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Called

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Devouring stars and licking the loins

of expiring galaxies, God is moving.

In these orgasmic vibrancies, God is singing and

an incalculable formation occurs.

 

My lover is very brave to be sitting still on the dead grass,

happily consumed by winter’s stretched mouth. He thinks

he is a catalyst, recording the fallout of those doomed stars,

but he is more – brimming as he is with manic velocity,

tied to the tunes that reel through his head.

Consideration is not his game,

nor being possessed by maudlin sentiment

like a drunkard is bound to the heel of his anguish.

 

He wakes up and never eats until evening.

There is love in his eyes

for everyone. I’m not saying this because he is mine

or because of what we have together –

afternoons of invigorating coalescence, conversing

like plant growth does with the sun.

What we have together is proof enough

that God is and nothing is

by mistake or smothered with futility.

I have walked with him up and down the beltline,

rubbed his toes when they were tingling, ran the bath water

for him, filling it with lavender oil and sea salt,

and all through this, he never stopped glowing.

Once babes and now teenagers, depend upon his care.

Ceilings have cracked and collapsed over him. It has not

been easy waiting for that commission – at the window,

watching cars and cars and fire trucks go by, going into

other years, years that are not stars but swell like stars,

combust like stars, illuminating a voice,

his voice that cannot, has not

shut down.

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Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Whisper”, June 2012

http://www.ur-online-shopping.com/poetry/archive/Archive10.htm

http://www.ur-online-shopping.com/poetry/archive/Called.shtml

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.

“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.

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Book reviews of the River is Blind paperback:

“Throughout (The River is Blind), she (Allison Grayhurst) employs 
reiterated tropes of swallowing and being consumed, spatial fullness 
and emptiness, shut- in, caverns, chasms, cavities; angels, archangels, 
blasphemy, psalms; satiation or starved. With a conceit of unrequited sex as “my desire”, nocturnal emissions, awakening in the morning, the poet lives at capacity, uninhibited, dancing,” Anne Burke, poet, regional representative for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of the Feminist Caucus.

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“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry. THE RIVER IS BLIND is a must-read,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

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