Three Poems| John Grey
ABANDONED NEW HAMPSHIRE FARMHOUSE
Forest devours wood
like a crow feasting on road-kill,
clapboard and stump,
press-ganged into the cause of future trees.
Even fireplace bricks, hard as farmers,
mulch their way to rain-pocked clay.
The garden has eloped with wildflowers.
Fence posts dig their own grave.
Only glass and metal take their time.
Window shards and rusty saucepans
defy the beseeching roots,
the insidious minerals of the soil.
It’s eighty years or so
since the family were evicted.
Weather harsh,
soil rocky and thin as skin…
northern New England,
is such a haughty, unfeeling landlord.
BACH ON A SUNDAY
What’s more important than music?
Not the Sunday edition of the daily paper.
Not if or when the meteor will hit.
I cast aside just about everything
for the privilege of listening.
There goes hope.
There goes history.
And look out highways, city centers and parking lots.
Your time too is up.
I’m drawn to a grace I can never reach,
a stroll across a landscape
that can only ever be unfamiliar.
It’s the onset of Dada
in the human soul.
Impenetrable
and yet here I am on the other side
MATING RITUAL
Fog rolls in off the bay
and a woman curls herself
slowly into my arms
with a pert sigh.
Outside may rub against the window
but it’s what’s happening in here
that concerns me,
feeling breaking out enough
to start the nerves jingling,
as soft breasts cross the last frontier
into my ribcage.
There’s time enough later
to complain about the poor visibility.
I prefer fragrance to details anyhow.
So we’re cut off from the rest of the world
in our red-brick walls,
terra cotta tile roof
white stone trim,
rococo imitation stonework.
Life beyond is large and murky,
wet and cold.
It’s like a funeral chapel,
musty and fusty.
I’m happy with small and clear,
dry and warm.
And rites of course,
just not the last ones.
Photo by roya ann miller on Unsplash
Bio:
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.
