January 2017
I am an Australian poet, US resident and recently retired financial systems analyst who spends his life writing and traveling. Recently published in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review.
Times Really Do Stand out in Our Lives
Can't remember exactly
but something must have happened
exactly twenty years ago.
It sure feels like an anniversary.
I'm walking these woods
but not in honor of
the little that occurred yesterday.
Swing my arms,
whistle...
I'm a parade.
And last night's meal,
tasty as it was,
can't be what I am celebrating.
Twenty years to the day that...
but what?
Birds don't know
unless these ones are
their own great grandfathers.
And trees may be
as old as America
but they're insufferably silent
when the subject comes around
to me.
I'll be home soon.
Maybe you can tell me
when we get there.
Twenty years ago...
didn't we... wasn't it...
ah yes, that's right,
It was the twentieth anniversary
of something.
That much you remember.
That much you don't celebrate.
Among Her
Eyes softening,
lips like crushed wool,
white rising in the cheeks,
a fog of flesh,
reminding me of what
stayed with my mother,
when all else wilted.
Taking the time again
for my mother,
at an age I remember her clearly being,
though she's gone ten years,
I find her in my face,
in the looks of strangers,
even in what other people do.
The photographs have had their say;
yes, nothing's more definitive
than snaps from her Pacific cruise,
a fine old lady standing with the grinning captain
behind glittering wine glasses
stacked like a card house —
but now it's time
to uncover her in what we all become,
no complete face anywhere
but spread across
a thousand glances,
a hundred stares.
Having half her features
is where I leave off.
I put away the mirror
and go out among her.
©2016 John Grey
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