- John Grey
Selected Poetry by John Grey

Photo Source: LibreShot
THE ONES I LIVE WITH
Yes I know the past
is not even past
but must it move in with me?
Good people and bad,
they fill the rooms,
take up almost every space,
I can barely breathe,
only remember.
I didn’t realize
the present could be
so encumbered
with what happened
last week, last year,
all the way back to my childhood.
But here they are.
And there’s me doing stuff
with them and to them.
Meanwhile, they’re affecting me.
Every move I make
requires their consent.
Everything I say
they hear and respond to.
Someone that I know now
shows up and
the characters in my
personal history
won’t even step aside.
So much for
a cozy night in
with pleasant company.
Three’s a crowd.,
One thousand
is a syndrome.
THAT WALK THROUGH THE WINTER WOODS
Night’s packed solid, as stiff as your fingers.
It’s six o’clock. Early February cold.
Not a puff of wind. The earth has stopped.
Your life doesn’t bristle, but chills at the suggestion.
The oaks, the maples,
have seen all this before.
But now they’ve an intruder to deal with.
You’re thin, bundled up but bare-headed,
boots crusted with ice,
chin with white whiskers.
You could die out here.
The bare trees are asking,
“Is that what you want?”
The air you breathe
is oxygen whose time is up.
The temperature is far below
the warm that gave you life.
You’ve been warned.
There’ll come a time
when a man would rather die
than go on with it.
Maybe they were just describing winter.
Then suddenly wind picks up.
It has mind to blow you somewhere.
At the edge of the woods,
your home is in sight.
A light burns in a window
like another year or two.
SEEING ANOTHER HOUSE
The house belongs to a couple
who’ve moved into something smaller.
The walls are blank but for
the marks where pictures hung.
Floors, stained here and there, creak.
The place is doing its best to look new
but history won’t have it.
The woman from the real estate agency
says nothing.
She wants the house to do the talking.
The rooms feel as nervous as wallflowers.
One word from you
and that hardwood can exhale.
Your husband’s in the cellar
checking out the pipes.
You’re in the smallest upstairs room.
Something invited you in
but was it the wind or the unborn?
It’s the tenth house
the two of you have looked at.
It accommodates your footsteps.
But does it welcome the times of your life?
TOURIST SYNDROME
Heat slows the senses
and there’s no wind
but for the flapping wings
of a peafowl.
The male half of a couple we’ve met
volunteers to take our picture.
It’s the kind of snap I hate –
grinning tourists in the foreground,
Taj Mahal in the background –
as if everything is arranged
in order of importance.
In reality,
we’re dwarfed by that mausoleum,
insignificant beside the giant marble dome,
staunch minarets,
the avenues, fountains of the Mughal gardens.
But we smile because
being who and where we are
is the best that we can do.
And the Taj Mahal is like much in our lives.
It just happens to be there.
A BODY ON A STRETCHER
Behind the yellow tape,
the passion of speculation,
stirred by everything not yet revealed
about a body being stretchered
from a house.
All these connections
to the laws of human nature,
the common language,
shared beliefs,
attach themselves to the familiar –
curiosity.
Why all the cop cars?
How did he die?
How did she die?
Was it murder?
Much muttering
in the background.
Frustration.
Disappointment.
The shared angst
of inability
to draw a conclusion.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke Review.