With the purity of a single intention

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      Days of history voyage low

into nations, beside graveyards.

You played with the existential architects for a while,

breathing in their deconstruction, but your laughter

languished. Straddled between crossroads,

you could not form a picture.

      Days of comfort can be understood

when the crack tents with severity enough

to slice two wholes.

      In your mind there are mountains

you have lost the ambition to cross, or to look up

at their venerated summits, and listen.

      You have lost the cunning to cope, continents of wayward

possibilities. Look up, for the sake of past miracles

that swooned into your embrace like found love

as a perfect match

against fatalism and rising futility. Look up – out

into outerspace

and grow yourself a fierce mystic midnight.

      Wash trails and gardens, places

where children are allowed to dig a hole in the ground,

tunnels where the earth shines copper

with forgotten buried pennies.

Look up and drop the stone of objection,

the stretching sorrows of realism.

      It is divine, if you choose it to be.

It is the freedom of a fugitive, freed

of the rusted bars, equipped with appetite

and the exuberance of a gamble.

      The ship is lost and an ocean is gained.

Water and water rhythms

are teaming between your toes,

salting your hair and open wounds.

      From side to side, look at the glorious space around you,

then up, envisioning yourself strong-winged, safe

as a seafaring bird.

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.Copyright  © 2012 by Allison Grayhurst

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First published in “Contemporary Poetry-an Anthology of Present Day Best Poems (Volume 2)” September 2015

https://www.createspace.com/5725069

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Click to access 20151023No_Raft_No_Ocean_by_Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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