Preparing

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I go to the crosswalk

and leave my bread crumbs on the other side.

I am waiting for motivation, for a clarity of purpose

that I once owned like a beautiful stone

I sunk under the St. Lawrence rapids. When I was a child,

I watched those rapids without fear,

stood close to the edge and never wondered

about the slippery underfoot,

never worried about the shadflies arriving like a plague of river insects

or about my loneliness that turned into a ghost companion

comforting me in those grey Quebec afternoons.

But here, in this riverless realm,

I cannot place my hands down. I cannot stretch wide enough

to feel whole. I go to the corner store and hear answers that only I

and the birds

can hear.

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Copyright © 2011 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Gloom Cupboard”, 2013

http://gloomcupboard.com/2011/11/17/poetry-139/

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/preparing.m4a?_=1

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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,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.