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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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Fine work/ not to belabor the point, but he’s a lucky man to have such
an eloquent reflector
can I hire you for my obit?
I don’t know about hiring you for my obit, but I would like to ask you to consider writing a short blurb for the back cover of my book that will publish this summer. And by the way, this is a ‘stellar’ poem, I came here to tell you so. Marvelous!