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Walking
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A grain I throw
in the water, floating, ready to
sink. I see you – thin as anyone
must be living on such an edge – tense
and tired of holding your breath. So many years –
a raging prophet, flailing your limbs
to keep the barnacles off, to keep the ones you love
close and to keep your mission in perfect purity.
These days the summer is dried spit on the pavement.
It opens my eyes to the struggle everywhere – pigeons
waiting for water, children running up the dry incline,
facing a bridge, the great restructuring.
You, riding the gilded wing – love is like the Earth’s dirt,
necessary, elemental, and its smell, saturated with memories.
I love you: Sometimes it is easy.
Sometimes I am a woman in God’s funnel cloud,
bending back to look, but seeing only storm.
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Copyright © 2010 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “FoxGlove Journal” March 2017
https://foxglovejournal.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/walking-allison-grayhurst/
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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“Allison Grayhurst intertwines a potent spirituality throughout her work so that each poem is not simply a statement or observation, but a revelation that demands the reader’s personal involvement. Grayhurst’s poetic genius is profound and evident. Her voice is uniquely authentic, undeniable in its dignified vulnerability as it is in its significance,” Kyp Harness, singer/songwriter, author.
“Allison Grayhurst’s poems are like cathedrals witnessing and articulating in unflinching graphic detail the gritty angst and grief of life, while taking it to rare clarity, calm and comfort. Grayhurst’s work is haunting, majestic and cleansing, often leaving one breathless in the wake of its intelligence, hope, faith and love amidst the muck of life. Many of Allison Grayhurst’s poems are simply masterpieces. Grayhurst’s poetry is a lighthouse of intelligent honour… indeed, intelligence rips through her work like white water,” Taylor Jane Green, Registered Spiritual Psychotherapist and author.
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