Two Poems by Allison Grayhurst

Before you

wide with surrender
with no backdrop or formula,
with the accomplishment of releasing
plans by the wayside into the swamp
that used to be an instrument playing,
a cliff of clay forming a tireless gale
of heavy sensual dreams.
……….I belong to you and to the strength of your empty hands,
the endings you leave me with, harvesting
ephemeral food – a soul full
of coastal curves that break the waters and is broken
by them, pressing and caressing the chain of tidal
obliteration as an umbilical cord connecting
to the vast sweet space that is you.
……….Never meant to anchor roots or climb a sturdy cliff,
you stop my struggle to illuminate a typical liberation,
gaining the wherewithal to stay pale, upright and destined in my cage.
For it’s not a hellish home, but submerged in the damp abandon of your shaking,
it is subject to your prying appendages poking, tearing away
speech and understanding.
……….I am yours, withdrawn from words into a connection
washed with elements of prayer but unlike prayer
more like lemonade to the day labourer or grass
to the grazing mare – away from bit, halter and reigns –
your sun sinking its evening heat into my back and shoulders, erasing division,
drawing an intimacy that frees my blood’s natural flow, squeezes out
the clotted clump of summoning-up years
scarred by grief and hidden,
rebellious longing.

As The Serpents Scatter 

………………..I lean
my back on the clock.
……….I drop the bitten sandwich
…………………………in a cellar full of mice. Joy
……….dries like the singing grave,
dries the eyes of sorrow. Snip. Snip.
………………..I am burning a blade over the neck
of Death. I am under the kiss
…………………………of a leopard – turtle bones
in my back pocket.
……….Deep as loneliness are habits that nurse
…………………………these days with doing.
………………..The eggshell is carved
……….like a prayer repeated – known
and drained of substance.
…………………………I roar on roads and highways.
……….I am the sound spiders love to carry,
love to hunt and consume.
………………..I am a white feather caught in a cloud.
……….Do you see the house by the water?
Do you know the trap of each stepping stone?
…………………………I turn my back on the seducer’s claw.
………………..I have my hope to blame.
……….But there is love in an owl’s wild eyes.
And there is a dream I cannot bury.

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 500 poems published in more than 250 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. More recently, her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.