Poetry

By

Allison Grayhurst 

No Telling

Taking back

the soft mood

the cockfight fire

I shrink from happiness as I do from horror,

while still craving the intensity of extremes.

There is no witchcraft cure, no person

unchanged by the constellations.

Taking back

the long-held hurt

the herd dream

and the tender gesture

Taking back the tyrannizing void

the genius ache

and the doldrum eve

There is no faith that can be won by force

and no telling what

my heart is willing to die for,

transcending.

In Some Uncertain Future

           I will sing again

of love that has found its verb and swell

and the avalanche of summer clouds will

consume me in their infinite shapes.

            I will cry again

the beautiful cry for the marriage of

heart and soul that must separate to

know each concealed fault.

            I will know again

my soul split from shock,

the mind’s tumbleweed and the choirs of

starlings beneath the overpass, baying

into endless sundown.

            I will feel again

that I am sinking like a snagged bird

from the sky of my belonging, feel the

things of guilty souls and how the night

can rid a heart of wonder.

            I will see again

a tribe of dark horses racing

on rooftops, my breast, an ocean of rolling moons

and an indelible smile.

            I will hold again

a duty of religious flare, a winter

bolted in the void where the snows

begin to fall like cut daisies.

Allison Grayhurst

Allison Grayhurst is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 450 poems published in more than 225 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. More recently, her chapbookSurrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com