Which Way?
Blue I wondered
blue in summer in
the mornings, caught in
the snail-size tales of
futility and inevitable floods.
Crooked boundaries, solid as
vapour, stung, trapped my fears
far from knowing the mercy of self-forgiveness.
I carried my purse like a stone, collected
empty wrappers, useless pens
and expired medicine,
burning always from head to foot,
impatient for change,
running into the concrete walls
of my collected fate.
Today, I look at the bloom of yellow flowers,
full in their last burst of joy before the frost,
and I am learning to drop that stone,
accept what lives and what cannot.
My bitterness has lost its vein to travel through,
forms and then corrodes.
Let others count their dollars
and covet extravagant houses.
I love my home like a trusted friend
and my garden is a portal into heaven
where the robin drinks and the mange-bitten squirrel
has made her home, digging, storing nuts.
Throats are cleared.
God’s giant voice has won
my full attention.
Switch me off. I am ready
to swim far into the ocean, fast
until my lungs burn, desperate for air.
There I will stop (the shoreline visible, but barely).
There I will wait for an answer, recover my breath and
decide – further out or back home.
Copyright © 2020 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “Raven Cage Zine” August 2020
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oDO3JF0w_ADaDcGM92uEvfSgLWZR-RqM/view
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Published in “The Academy of The Heart and Mind” October 2020
https://academyoftheheartandmind.wordpress.com/2020/10/20/world-away-and-other-poems/
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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