The fault of sages
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Love was there
spreading hope like jam over my taste buds.
Then the first skipping rope broke,
got snared on a fence and frayed.
I stole away on a subway train where
hundreds have gone walking into a warzone.
Amen to the end and the predator’s
happy-go-lucky disposition. One claw,
one tentacle, in flowing precise motion.
Another lifetime and it may be different,
tender as lovers beneath their first full moon,
or worse, like cartilage deteriorating.
I rehearsed a familiar pattern,
sabotaging memories to find a way to be holy,
to make only God matter, dismantling adult days
of calculation, days of stultifying impulses,
of consciously unplugging the push of inspiration.
I flicked the splinter and loosened its stem, learning
that every homecoming is different – some shed
their most treasured members, others,
an accommodating persona. Still others constrict
just to pitch thought and become a pulse.
Love I lifted like a heavy stone,
trying to grow flowers between sparrows’ toes
where they nested and puffed up under eavestroughs,
trying to weave myself an escape in the shade,
a carpet to lie back on.
Solutions were bare,
offered crossword puzzle satisfaction
but no retreat from passengers staring
and the continuous stab of uncertainty.
Templates I now break and breathe and blow all away
into the sandalwood spring, into the eyes of my dog.
Stiff joints lend themselves to patience,
planting wings in my palm – empty spaces finally
accepted. Shadows I see take on a life of their own
and keep dancing. God I see in the sloping deformity
of all steps climbed, treacherously taken, born whole
from parallel paths of lack and yearning.
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.Copyright © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
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First published in “The Furious Gazelle” June 2015
http://thefuriousgazelle.com/2015/06/16/allison-grayhurst/
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Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf
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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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