Looking In

Looking In

How easy to feel the weight

of choice, mutually

with the burden of circumstance.

Childhood ripens then wilts,

and in your unguarded hands, only

shades of poverty-stricken

summers remain; enormous & unavoidable.

What is real is not always the same as

what is eternal, yet those days,

when overabundant with love,

reappear, and strangely, make a difference.

You hold a torch, moving urgently through aqueducts

towards icy light. When you reach

the blue loneliness of abstraction, secretly

you are sure

the fullness of truth has rushed away

from you; and that this knowledge

too, is unusable.

You flourish beside the lightheaded angels. You carve

in stone, in vain

their god-affirming songs. You stand

outside, alarmed. You disappear.

Time hangs in your thoughts like an imaginary lover.

You look in the mirror and see

a great void, a perfect smile . . . and see

there is still so much left

to learn.

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

First published in “Synchronized Chaos” July 2017

http://synchchaos.com/?p=13230

http://synchchaos.com/?p=13218

http://synchchaos.com/synchronized-chaos-july-2017-scale-factor/

http://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-allison-grayhurst-3/

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

“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