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Train
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Kneeling on the train tracks: Resigned to this
dangerous meditation – a risk of steel wheels
on flesh and flattened limbs. Kneeling because
I cannot move or adhere to the voices in my head
singing of an intimate shower, a transmutation
of my solidarity and how I see my special self – love from
everywhere singing, dwelling in my sleep which
is never sleep but wide-awake dreams and turning from
side to back. Kneeling, I hear nothing coming, but it
will come – heavy, unstoppable, driven with pure intent.
Kneeling until I can claim this destiny without shame, stare
at the treasure of hands and lips and touch back,
until I weep my centre raw, until I carry nothing
but the moment, love again – sadness, shadows,
unwashed hair, desperate desire – until I can sleep and stop
kneeling – head neither turned up nor down. Kneeling,
hearing a distant moan, a vibration –
inevitable as this kneeling
I must but I cannot not yet not yet
let go of.
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Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “The Brooklyn Voice” February 2014
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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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What an image – what a statement – reminds me of the horse running toward the train headlight coming toward it on the track – Grayhurst’s poems are like paintings – I wish someone would paint this:
“until I can sleep and stop
kneeling – head neither turned up nor down.”