Half Circle
Too late, in the earth,
dug out and consumed.
A cramp in the thigh you named
your own, the affronted sensibility
of your self-importance.
That cramp took out your uterus,
took your home on the hill
and put you in a basement,
took me out too
of any further equation.
Too far, the fracture thickened into
a chasm, your mind found release
in bold yellows and reds
because it could no longer bear
the subtleties of existence.
You turned a monster into an effigy
of hope, sold justice for titillating fascism.
I am trying to forgive you, accept your death,
the hardened block cell walls of your mind,
once so fecund with inquisitiveness,
abstraction and high atmosphere.
Sometimes mercy comes as a shock,
a rippling destructive wave, speeding, breaking
the floorboards, the ceiling, so there is no recourse
but to run into the wide open, pajamas on, grief
on naked display.
Grief over our desecrated love,
over never knowing another morning
without raw anxiety, with allegiance only
to the immediacy of obvious uncertainty,
loss, the possibility of more loss.
God is on my doorstep
like a swarm of sparrows saying
I love you I love you
I am here
I have been broken by this unhappy year,
still breaking, it seems.
I cannot piece myself together.
God arrives as a blue jay at my back window,
speaks, and I know the past is a finished dance,
necessary, sealed.
Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra
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First published in “Atunis Galaxy Poetry website and anthology” March 2021, August 2021
https://atunispoetry.com/2021/03/19/allison-grayhurst-canada/
https://atunispoetry.com/2021/03/
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Published in “Raven Cage Zine” March 2021
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OHHDKazRmtKcCPpR4sco_SrxoK19029c/view
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You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below:
