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Lotus

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        Sleep, into triumphant sleep,

waking is a tide of abysses and senses

reflecting illusions. Cursory stresses,

repairing at the bedside where my knees bent in prayer,

scuffing my skin with cosmic complaining.

        I’ve thought about this, and I’ve decided

not to care if I fail at swimming or grooming or trophy-getting,

or in collecting eggwhites, having more than what I have

necessary on the table.

        Love is the weathervane is the station,

earning eternity, a teaming ocean worthy of a dive.

The rest is a stunted fetus that will never coo

or be baby-dream sufficient.

        I’ve spent too long weight-lifting chaos’s hammer,

flinging myself from wall to stump.

I have eyes that hold me, another’s and another’s

I can take pictures of and sing to, and I wish for nothing

but to retain this fertility of tender revealing.

        Children and the final history of desire,

predestined to return as a speck – own my freewill,

multiplying with the rhythm of a brighter responsibility.

        Sleep, for I’ve never existed

but to count this love and to love this way

personal, a cliché of bloated ignorance,

with a mouthful of famine and an armful of miniscule miracles,

gestating, spiralling, blending into the soft brown sofa,

tea in hand, leaning on another, amazed

by how good this is and how very long

this cozy reverie has lasted.

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.Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Guwahatian, Volume 1, Issue 9”, 2014

 

http://www.guwahaticity.in/Guwahatian/Vol1_Issue9/ipmc1.php

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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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.