3 poems by John Grey

AMARYLLIS BELLADONNA

I sometimes wonder
how death resides so amicably
in this lovely pink lady-lily.
Atop a long, naked stem,
funnel-shaped flowers flutter like any other,
but the plant is an adder with roots.

Deer avoid it.
But cows know no better.
Its virulent poisons
thin the herd from within.

In the meadow, a child is pulled away
from a clump of the amaryllis,
as a mother points with stern face
and then shakes that same finger.
The little girl will learn that 
what looks like a safe place
can be something else entirely.

And yet, in some countries,
the belladonna is a soldier 
in the war against malaria.
It’s the invidious mosquito 
against the lethal petals.
It takes a killer to know a killer. 

  
 









MAINE FISHING VILLAGE, EARLY EVENING

Everything's moving like blind men.
No evening star, just fog rolling in from ocean.
The town takes fog's vagueness to heart.
Am I a drunk or a good family man?
Gay or straight? Believer or atheist?   .
Everything's gray, meets in the middle,
makes for an uncomfortably comfortable closeness.
And it smells offish besides.
Walking in fog, eyes are alien,
more lose their way than find it.
From docks, from beach,
working folks traipse sand and stone and salt.
Crustaceans are buried deep,
birds are in their roosts,
but shapes crawl crab-ways
or like egrets, take tiny steps then stop.
Sidewalks struggle to keep direction honest.
But there's side-streets. And tavern lights.
A pair of old tars don't bother.
With a direction home that won't see reason,
they seek solace in their boat,
knocking glasses in rhythm to the bump of hull
against shell-encrusted pylons.
In haze, in murkiness,
signposts adopt random positions.
A man is not who he is
but where he finds himself,
with little to guide him,
must work from the inside out.
Hence the stumble.
The wrong turn.
Only topography finds its way.
Under moon's decree,
seas begin their stately unseen rise,
retrace the morning ebb.
 








3.00 A.M., MY TIME

At 3.00 a.m., 
a quarter moon 
is drifting amiably across the sky.
You’re asleep in the bed behind me.

I stand at the window,
look out,
a little restless,
at least compared to your serenity. 

There’s not enough light
to illuminate the nuances 
of the city below
so I must take it as a huge
nest of shadows.
And I’ve no wish to wake you,
interrupt your unimaginable dreams.

The sky is illuminating
but it’s infinity,
a phenomenon my thoughts 
are just not up to 
analyzing or imitating.

And you’re close at hand,
but subliminal,
an eternity of a different kind.

At 3.00 a.m.,
there is nothing else
and there is no one else.

The last breath I took
hasn’t heard the last of me.

Return to Journal

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.