JOHN GREY

JOHN GREY

A Question Of Survival

I think I'm cheating or something.

Otherwise, why do the gunmen

mow down the innocent in northern Kenya

and not here.

My life is like answers written

on the back of my hand.

Floods, earthquakes,

riots in the streets - no.

It says right here in my knuckles:

eat tasty dinner, watch TV,

go to bed and sleep deep.

Even when the violence is close,

there's a piece of paper

hidden in my pocket

that I can refer to.

Drug deal gone wrong?

No, it clearly states,

kiss on the cheek,

arm around the shoulder.

Three car pile-up on 295?

The missive declares,

drive on, go to your destination,

you're not involved.

I read the newspaper in the morning:

Kidnappings, muggings,

landslides and always more massacres.

Nothing in those pages indicates

that these or any other

crimes, wars and disasters,

can be avoided.

Not even the obituaries.

But the ones pictured

are always someone else.

If I knew my secret

believe me I'd share it

with all the ones

who don't know their secret.

At The Flood

The titanic potency of water —

not even ocean vast enough to contain it;

torrential rains, hurricane winds,

streams breaking the chains of their banks,

massive waves bursting through overworked barriers;

houses, unmoored, whipped away by vicious currents,

survivors clinging to rooftops,

lives tossed indifferently here, there,

slammed against driftwood cars, or sucked into the vortex,

trees uprooted, crops drowned,

and erratic forces

of like nature within me,

through the window, beneath the skin,

tension and willy-nilly change,

consciousness inundated

by flooding angsts and disturbances,

stirred up by new arrivals from the unconscious —

no defenses saved —

a hard-worn ego

swept up by the tide,

swamped by unreality;

look around me,

no one, nothing,

that isn't caught up in waves,

losing touch, grabbing on to any rock or stomp,

trusting luck, forgoing wisdom -

survival comes from unusual sources -

shelter in vessels of cloistering restraint,

starting life over with tiny but available substances

Birds At The Feeder

Birds gather at the feeder

during the short days of February,

mostly brown, some gray,

and occasionally the striking blue

of the chatty jay and the

cardinal's blood red.

They peck at sunflower seeds

or the mix in a tray.

Woodpeckers cling to suet cages,

drilling the good white fat,

black and white but

for the red dot on the forehead,

like an Indian bindi.

Doves poke and plod

at ground level,

among the husks,

the unintentional spill,

their slate heads bobbing

like old men agreeing

with what they do not understand.

Sometimes, a stranger alights,

a grosbeak, a towhee,

even an escaped cage bird,

passing through

but, like all the others,

leaving something of themselves

with our eager faces at the window.

It's winter, far from summer's bounty,

and we can't help being hi their lives more.

But they pay us no attention.

Survival is too busy to give thanks.

JOHN GREY

JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Chronogram and Clade Song.