3 poems by John Grey

YOU ARE NOT A BIRD

Sorry
but your bones aren’t air-pockets.

You’ve no beak, no claws,
No wings or feathers.

A leap of three feet in the air
is followed by a similar drop.

You’ve not the lightness
to keep your ascent going.

And your descent
is like your life.

It will never break
with gravity.





SUCH A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP

And now it's your exercise kick,
jogging around the neighborhood
early summer mornings,
winter evenings on the treadmill
coached by a weary video of Jane Fonda.
Gray sweats have come into our life together,
along with assorted vitamins, strange sodas.
You've made a pledge with yourself
to live better, live longer.
But what does that leave for me,
seduced into the rim of your world
by grilled chicken, fish,
more vegetables, less pizza.
You should know by this
that based on your forays
into religion, yoga, Armenian cooking,
origami, chair refurbishing and bonsai gardens,
only you can occupy
the center of your life.
All the perspiration is dripping from your pores.
The aches, the twinges, are the indignities
of your joints alone.
You can tell me all you want
about how you haven't felt this good in years.
So what about those years
when you felt less good.
How much better was that.





ST. ANNE’S CEMETERY

This is where all the people went.
Some to shrines, large and small.
But most merely prop up plain stones,
at the sides of the winding pathways, 
in the weeds by the rusty fence.

The sky stirs 
in a way the earth cannot.
It is darkening.
This soil is always dark.

The first few drops
send scattered mourners
to their cars.
A scrawny stray dog
seeks the shelter of the willow.
It’s been another fruitless day
spent searching for its master.

Bones and brass,
rosewood and embalming fluids,
so much is underfoot.
But only rain 
is buried in the sky.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, 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, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.

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