Tidalwave Making Moon

Tidalwave Making Moon

Decades lived by finding hope on the cliff.

The cliff remains but hope is gone and mercy

has taken its place, donning a revised skin.

Surrender is not gentle or shallow,

does not come with a sigh but overtakes

with a shudder, a whimper, sleep.

I am branded as mush like the crawling thing

that early summer created – clear and stripped of lasting form.

Corners blend then curve and curve again to make a sphere.

Searching is only born from blindness. Perfect vision comes

with the maiming of everything non-essential, when the only

essential is love and being alive to excite clouds into paintings.

The bountiful children clutter on the doorstep, have

one bed, two pillows for their many nesting heads.

This they have, thin soup and no winter boots –

each one giggling freely, sweetly at the first falling snow.

Branches are lizards I have broken before.

Their thorny teeth, a blessing to swell the stream

of immediacy, covering me completely

with oily holy sludge I have been trying for weeks

to wipe from my nostrils.

Rubbing clean like singing – crescendo, couplet,

and just breathing in as part of the song,

holding breath, building in the stillness.

Slowing awakening from the pressure, containing force

in a tight-tongue swirl, movement starts, and cannot stop,

until it beats out a haunting, lingering completion.

What is left is the chilling joy of mutual mercy

needed, received. Blood becomes a false dream,

and the moon, and money too.

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

First published in “ancient heart magazine”

http://ancientheartmagazine.blogspot.ca/2013/06/tidalwave-making-moon.html

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

“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.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.