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With These Things

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With these things absent of flame, lovers

deny the vibrant depths of twilight,

the beauty of a bucking mare in the wet grasses

of autumn and a gallery of possibilities

to shower their skins.

 

With these things of surface-hold, these things

cured by sleep and time that steals the shock

but never fully heals, lovers

lose the meaning of their merging, the touch

of each other’s tongue that touches

like a smooth horn and stings

with unimaginable tenderness.

 

With these things gone like things go that

no sorrow can express, lovers

grow weak from humiliation, grow

devoted to abstraction, armoured

by resentment, callous

as a jewel.

 

But with these things of horror of hatching

a new self inside a familiar world, lovers

learn to fly despite the lovers’ legends and

the arsenic.

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Copyright © 1997 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in Psychopoetica, 1996

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Published in “Quantum Poetry Magazine”, 2011

http://quantumpoetry.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/allison-grayhurst/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/with-these-things.m4a?_=1

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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.