Allison Grayhurst: Poetry

More Than Commitment
 
 
We see the bend
and the gulls in full motion
outside our door.
We feel the moon in our mouths
and foolish dreams
drip down our inner thighs.
It’s time to relinquish
our boat on the ferry docks, relinquish
our dearest pet at the graveyard.
It’s time to know the yellow lands of late summer -
let the air into our home and let the lock
on this sanctuary be broken -
to open more than possibilities,
more than a Sunday-hope.
We see the bend and we say goodbye,
out of the funnel
and into the luminous sky.
 
 
 
 
Secret
 
 
We share an altered epiphany each night
we merge below water, never speaking
but touching satin against soul, tumbling
in our home-spun ecstasy
like the pounding of pure birth.
We rise and fall speechless, buried
in the radiance of our realm where we journey,
our skins seeped in sensuality,
still discovering after nineteen years, building a depth
unencountered - the two of us,
bending, refitting the mantra of male and female confinement,
drugged by the surprise, by the thickened lips of our
controlled urgency, blind to all but each other,
the muse of our
naked dancing, breathing, visceral releasing, and
at the end, laughing as though we were seeing
our first ever snow fall.
 
 
 
 
 
Son of no one
 
 
There never was a moment for you
when freedom could have
ripped your destiny in two - where choice not chance
could have uncornered your existence.
Because you took every risk - collapsing in the shadows,
coveting the Egyptian Buddha.
Your breath is like a child’s, breaking on a slab of rock
held close to your face. I would fan the sun for you
if it would make a difference, if your shoes would stay tied
and your rage would stay at bay. I would
pluck the curse from your veins, if there was something to
pluck, if it wasn’t acceptance and only acceptance that
would change the curse, not remove it, but alter its outcome.
I love your eyes, beneath your dark
ridge brows. I hear you singing in
the middle of the night. I can
taste the salt on your lips. You want to be cold, but you
can’t be. You were made this way, to enter the world at
your own pace. You are elemental, wider than your history.
You are not alone. And that
is something.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Kneel Beside Love
 
If ever you kneel beside love
strip yourself in the midnight cold
and your heart expands
moist
like ice on heat
feels the flood
the zealous delight
uprooting misery
in moments too marvelous for words . . .
 
Gardeners, lovers
you decide
the wish
beside each other
faces are made real
inadequacies vanish
leaving no trace of murder
or time
 
What you feel
walking
in this pulsing spring
daring such joy
no illness could alter
What you feel
briefly
as you join skin and souls . . .
 
creating refuge
even death
cannot violate.
 
 
 
​

Wingbeats
 
I could tell you
never close your eyes
it is us
and us only
who carry the iron
and dismiss ourselves from the cross
Where is home?
Can you answer me
in this month of sensuous summer?
When we love
is it enough
to entice the dead from their settled sleep?
I once heard the sound of pain
in an old man’s voice
It was real
the magic of song
milk from a mother’s swollen breast
the authentic desire
for union
Every vineyard
has its legend
Every someone
wanders protected and important
in this long age of insanity
Nearly all dancers
have hesitated,
felt their passions, suspicious
unnatural impulses
depleting their strength
But so –
heaven is not a womb
nor a winter’s twilight
intense but brief
I once saw a golden eagle
repeat its wingbeats
alone in the breeze
flapping
as if to say:
I know myself
completely.
 




Truth Givers
 
They are in the hospitals
They are under the eucalyptus trees
They are in the anniversary cakes
They are in the stone-hedged mansions
gossiping on the latest idea
to muse over with their delicate, pale hands.
At the end of heaven’s domain
they celebrate entrance into the market place
where they arrive with their wings,
proud and evasive.
Too large to drown
in the gloomy crowded faces,
so they soar between the sheep herd
trapped
in that superior altitude.
The wind fingers them with its wet tongue.
Unharmed, they rock
over the body of the weeping sky,
searching for something beyond
conclusions or ecstasy.
 
The artists tilt, shipwrecked next to them:
Locked on horizons of unresolved beauty.
Some days their eyes close and the flute touches the pen
with explosive unity, with ancient embrace.
As far apart as the ghost and the angel, they edge inside
the artist’s heart, just to feel
the skinless souls
of love makers.

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three times nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, she has over 1100 poems published in over 430 international journals. She has sixteen published books of poetry, seven collections and nine chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com  

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