Snow angel - Poems by John Grey

POEMS BY JOHN GREY: Children in Snow, Biology, Living Alone

Last updated: April 9th, 2019

Children in Snow

The sky is hidden
behind clouds.
Mounds of snow
swallow the land.

On lips,
the taste of ice cream
longs for home
but what arrives is chill
without the creaminess.

A solitary crow
slips from bough to bough
seeking out the dead below.

And yet the children
roll in the drifts,
come up looking like
half-dressed angels.

Temperatures drop,
winds blow—
it’s hell out there.
But heaven, unexpectedly,
sends its regards.

Biology

A deer that skittered across the road—
a fish leaping out of the water—
a sow with dugs hung low—
a spider creeping to the outskirts of its web—
a lioness pacing a cold cement cage—
a lovebird, solitary on a fluttering branch—
a coyote howling the long thread of night—
but I have to like her,
the woman fond of shifting in her chair,
who suggests coffee,
who lights candles,
who twists her hands, enfolds her fingers,
who arches her spine,
sits up straight as a broomstick,
scratches her palm with red nails.
A cow with head plunked deep in grass—
a muskrat kneading mud into home—
a dog calm in the face of yapping puppies—
a tiger prowling the backstreets of National Geographic
an owl with a flapping snake in its beak—
a fox dashing through the brush—
but I’m stuck with humanity,
the nervous kind.
Small breasts heaving,
brown eyes blinking,
lips on the verge of being sucked in
by her mouth.
For all my baying, yelping, lowing,
honking, screeching, bellowing,
she is the female of my species.

Living Alone

Foundations of
mist … lost moon,
faded light of love
across old floor,
coffee cup
overturned by the
latest poem,
sanguinary enough
to mark the end of the rein
of the pitiless writer’s block.
Paper with writing on it …
shade-giving
starry scimitar,
shadow of the good ship,
spring of all
sidereal silence.
Weary,
we writers lift off
the shackle of purposelessness.
Sleep on our endeavors.
Motionless like fallen snow.
Softened by roof, by solitude.
Inaccessible but still a life.

Read more of John’s poetry on The Mindful Word by visiting POEMS BY JOHN GREY: Skin, Kicking the nostalgia kick, Rowboat»

image: Wonderlane (Creative Commons BY)

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