Riding bareback

Riding bareback

I seep into corners

flat and blending for a chance

to call faith a choice. Shadows

are not evil but ambiguous,

a vague scent of putrid uncertainty.

Themes of children’s horns

and the penetrating air. Going off ground

into the softness of a dream, supplanted by the

ethereal plane and growing

a strange set of limbs to

accommodate such relaxed pressure.

Solitude sings, bird are around me, up trees,

paddling through the condensed atmosphere.

Explore, I forgot the beauty

in discovery, a chance to mutilate

cynicism with a single blow. I blow

wild peppers out of my hands,

touch heads with the shy sparrow.

There is a horse, chestnut copper.

I rub the dust from her coat. I am everything

while looking into her large left eye –

a child in tune, exhilarated, heart-rate

galloping, catching its rhythm from her swaying forelock.

The sound like a star being transformed or two moons

colliding – I am taken on the path,

inches from the cliff – moving too fast to

be afraid, moving like fine sand through a sieve,

piling below, building a mythic mountain from

gravity, from quicksand-joy

imagination.

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Published in “Scarlet Leaf Review” April 2016

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“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“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.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.