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My Tiger Lilly

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Do you speak? I remember

your misty, honey eyes,

you, the owner of youth

and baby toys,

smiling under the blond tree

on my lap laughing at

the cherry coloured balloons

rising up into a full blown sky.

How sweet and free were our days

making sand castles in the autumn air,

filling our cups with wonder.

Naked love. There were my hands

hugging your inexhaustible heart

as you slept, clean and dreaming

in a foreign altitude.

Times flashes like mirrors in our

soul’s depths, concealing eternity

behind a flat one dimensional interest.

You point to the bleeding heart flowers

and say they are beautiful.

Seven years, seven strange deaths

and still you are smiling: I do not

know you that well anymore.

You make the moths sing like butterflies.

You taste salt and say it drives

your feet to dance.

And when I leave,

you promise to follow me into adulthood;

somewhere between the angel and the child.

 

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.Copyright © 1991 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Alias, Issue 20”, 1994

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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“Grayhurst’s rapturous outpouring of imagery makes her poems easily enjoyable … Like a sear the poet seeks to fathom sensual and spiritual experience through the images of a dream.” Canadian Literature

 “Allison Grayhurst’s Common Dream is a massive book by a talented and enthusiastic young writer, with a feel for descriptive, meaningful verse. Philosophical and very deep,” Paul Rance, editor of Eastern Rainbow, U.K.,  spring 1993.

“Her poems read like the journal entries of a mystic – perhaps that what they are. They are abstract and vivid, like a dreamy manifestation of soul. This is the best way, in prose, one can describe the music which is … the poetry of Allison Grayhurst,” Blaise Wigglesworth Oh! Magazine

“Rich images and complex, shifting metaphors drive Allison Grayhurst’s poems. She focuses on sexual love and interior landscapes, widening to include the heart, eternity and all.”  Next Exit

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