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I heard a poet say

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that doing art is a denial of self. I say

it is an inclusion of God into the self.

It is not simply a dialogue nor is it intellectual banter,

but it is being intoxicated with the fullness

of seeing God there with every thought –

in the swimming pool while treading water,

or at the hair dresser, drinking coffee, waiting for a turn.

    A pebble is paradox like time travel is, or a meteor

entering the earth like a man enters a woman –

a synergy of the round and the sharp,

splicing, splitting, until more splicing and splitting, until

dependency on oxygen is born.

    Speculation, lectures, ceremonies

are deeds to occupy but never to explain.

Hair like a mammoth’s – how I long to run

my knuckles through its thickness and ancestry!

I am not intimidated by people with busy days

and many different shoes. Brown

has become my favourite colour, and grey, that too

is magic. I knew this when I was young:

True intensity is subtle, is equal

in its magnitude as it is to its intricacy –

It commands exploration.

    When I was young I knew God was with me

at every threshold, standing inside my flesh. Since then,

I have played with death,

held conference with death as a sister.

    But even such sibling biology

cannot cull this communion I have discovered,

can’t vacuum apart indelible combined-shapes

into quarantined segregation.

    I have known death’s jolts, have known

its harrowing cripple and crack, and know

it cannot revert humanity back to that interval

before God exhaled, altering the playing field,

resulting in

such a mighty fusion. 

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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/I-Heard-a-Poet-Say.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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