.

There are names

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and allegiances that triumph

when spoken aloud. I do not speak

these sounds or have a country

that edges near ecstasy. I have loved badly,

pessimistic, fostered a hostile vacancy

of fantastical hope. Insolent towards God

and the steady rapture that only comes with patience,

I purchased an industry that leaves no mark,

makes nothing useful

or sweet.

 

Remembering my waxed-leaf collection held

within hard cover books, and the frolicking of field mice

that burrowed patterns into my head. I sat on the bus and

I was alone. Did I know how fragile sanity was, unlocking

doors, imagining mountains on the surface of the sun?

 

Snared before my shelter broke

and I could be saved by surrender.

A thicket of needles and bushes trembling with little birds.

Contact. Glint.

Won’t something rush at me, increase my odds?

 

I could send you away, then I could live

cold, complete as a reed or as an angel.

Science will not have me. You will not let me go.

 

Remembering seashells wrapped in tissue paper, in a box,

on a shelf, just above the closet floor, counting them –

rough external even ridges, glassy sheen empty pocket inside.

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.Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “River Poets Journal, Volume 8, Issue 3”, 2014

http://www.riverpoetsjournal.com/RiverPoetsJournalPDFfiles.html

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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.

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