The Empty Forest

Your reflection is gone.
Mine is all that’s left
in these waters.

Your voice isn’t here either.
The woods are full of bird song,
a rustle or two in the brushes,
but nothing human.

In the house,
you’re merely missing.

But here,
in the forest,
you’re never coming back.

The grander the scale,
the greater your absence.

Her Seventieth

If lives grew vertical,
she’d be at

the highest point.
The burning candles

would celebrate this milestone
as if she were Hillary and Norgay

conquering Everest.
But a life’s ascent

is as brief as a prayer,
slopes downward for a time

before dipping precariously.
So she looks up

at the years lived already
and down at those to come.

She’s less Sir Edmund
and Tenzing

and more Florence Hillary
and Maureen Norgay.

Those two both have trouble
going up and down stairs.

He’s the Champion of the World

He’s shy they say
but I believe that’s just focus.
He ran a great race today.
His new book is in the stores
and garnering rave reviews.
And what of his concerto.
Or the flex of his upper-arm muscles.
And to think, a CEO at his age.
A leader in touch-downs,
a mountain climber par excellence.

He’s never been married.
But the task at hand is a wife.
Run, write, compose, work out,
rise to the top of the business world,
then catch the ball in fluid motion,
while pegging your way up Everest.
What’s not to love.

He gets anxious when he stops like this.
What if the world goes on without him?
The price for dalliance
is living like the rest of us.
Marge is just about to introduce him
to her daughter Sarah.
He nervously shakes hands.
Their eyes lock.
He’s doomed to lose his titles.

Sitting by the Pool, Watching the Swimmer

Twilight sets in but she’s still doing laps of the pool.
What was once smooth and blue is now vague and shadowy.
She’s pulling herself through water, kicking
her feet like flippers to double down on her intent.
Every afternoon, it’s thirty times up and back,
which is about a hundred swims in my reckoning
but just the one long marathon to her.
She conquers something that, to my mind,
is not in need of conquering.
But, then again, she writes no poetry.
And nor does she see the need.
She’s streamlined, perfectly built for gliding through water.
I’m romantic, contemplative, easily distracted from the real world.
I’d likely drown if I applied this elsewhere.

A Year of Solitude

Who said it would be okay?
And I will know it when the time comes?
And where it lands it will stick?
And maybe it is here already?

Was it the sound of her footsteps?
Or waves lapping the shore?
Or the creaking of these floors?
Or the fluttering green leaves
of my backyard oasis?

Meanwhile,
there’s all this stuff I’ve been writing,
the pen, the paper, the overhead lamp,
the desk, the coffee,
in hope that the work, once completed,
will be an answer
to all or any of these questions.

But now, there’s me on one side,
the unknown on the other.
There’s what I know now
and the mystery of what I will become.

I’m home. It’s quiet.
Outside ploughs the soil with rain.
Dark clouds match it with headlights.
Blue curtains keep me separated.
Creation is the perfect foil to this weather.
And so is holding out
for the next thought that comes to mind.
Too bad, they’re getting harder and harder to think.

Yet what I hunger for doesn’t change.
That much life has taught me.
And, with each lesson, it gets worse.
For I’m all alone and marking my own papers.

The Usual

I often wonder
where I would be without the predictability,
so much more common than randomness,
as every scene feels like the one
I always come across
whether it’s children playing in the park
or a sale sign in a furniture store window.

Your “good morning” is like reading
the same page of as book that I read
yesterday and the day before.
And the taste of every vegetable on the tongue
never varies whether it’s boring spinach
or crunchy and invigorating raw carrots.

Yes, people fall from cliffs.
Or they win lotteries.
They’re shot in a case of mistaken identity.
Or they’re spotted by an agent,
turned into a movie star.

But mostly everyone who enters a room
leaves that room unchanged.
Each footstep is a continuation
and a preview of footsteps to come.
The words we say, we’ve spoken before.
The face in the mirror is unsurprised
by the face looking into it.

With so much sameness to back me up,
I feel secure
when odd things happen.
Like when I pause for a moment
when a car nearly hits me.
I can return to where it doesn’t.

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.

You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.