….

Light that drips down the turnpike, onto roads

and ways far away from any window.

Blocks to build shelters and shields. Flags on flimsy poles.

A neutral breeze busting cardoors and

personalized licence plates.

Paved over, I see a carcass dripping, a little yellow flower,

smaller than a thumbprint.

Rust-coloured shawl, poncho that holds

great sentimental significance holds

me to a memory, old now as a ten-year-old untended garden

or pavement cracks grown into fissures.

 

Forging, face-like an image. Worm in my sink.

Blood and cup of nutritional joy.

Hold out for the grace of good music

and drying on rocks, nude in the sun.

Quiet heat building up into renewal. Tattered ankle cuffs

and shrinking shadows, mid-stream. Up,

up we go, insistent on making an impression.

But walk lightly is all I’ll ever learn, spoon-feeding the children.

I bloom and I will die a woman, a butcher of frivolity

and the natural sequence of things.

The day is one day – enough, taken

into its rolling waters,

a dog’s dream to join in, frolic in

some other species’ symbolism.

 

Copyright © by Allison Grayhurst 2014

 

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry” Volume 4, Number 1, June Issue 2014

http://themuse.webs.com/June%202014/muse%20june%2014.pdf

http://themuse.webs.com/latestissues.htm

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You can listen to the poem below:

 

In response to the poem – Walkways:

“This is brilliant! Brilliant. Reminds me of when I first read Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. And I wanted to stand up on the city bus and exclaim aloud: “Listen to this!” A comprehensive capturing of human earthly experience in all its dimensions without missing a beat – beyond the conscious mind – dancing with the levels of our knowing and sensing – that we feel but do not always recognize, and rarely, oh so rarely articulate. Clearly, Grayhurst’s poetic journey has taken her to the mountain top,” Taylor Jane Green, registered holistic talk therapist and author.

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