As promised last month, here are three more wonderful poems by our frequent contributor, John Grey.
ALL IN ONE DAY
We drove the ocean road,
smothered in fog,
could barely see the blue expanse,
all our vision was in the hearing
as it pounded the shore below.
But then that fog lifted.
The day was all of a sudden
warm and dazzling.
We stopped at a meadow,
picked wildflowers,
spotted a fawn with its mother,
hiked a trail to a waterfall
and rested in a cool oak grove.
We ate outdoors
at a roadside restaurant.
We saw a lone surfer
testing his skill on medium-sized waves
at some unnamed beach.
Clouds moved in
and it began to rain.
The wind picked up.
My wipers beat like my heart had earlier.
*
SAM
He fishes through the ice
and he plays an antique dobro.
He’s maybe in his fifties.
still in good shape,
and he wears his gray hair
in a pony-tail.
The women who knew him
when he was young
still look at him
as if he still is
though his face is lined
and his eyes a shade less blue.
Even old Ma Jenkins
once accidently
came upon him skinny-dipping
in Myers Pond
and she didn’t turn away.
He was the first in town
to get himself a tattoo
and also the first
to stop at only one.
He drinks but a little
and he doesn’t say much
but he’s in these dreams of others
where he drinks a lot
and says even more.
The dreamers wake up smiling
while their husbands snore on.
He doesn’t encourage them.
He merely goes about his business
which is his and his alone.
It could be ice-fishing.
It could be plucking
on his dobro.
This is enough for him.
It’s enough for everybody.
*
ON YOUR WATCH
You’re the very last one in the bar.
at the window table,
sipping on a beer,
staring out at the moon,
the supermarket parking lot across the street
and the occasional people stumbling by.
You’re content in your role as spectator.
You’ve retired from active life.
No plot will have you.
There’s someone out there
playing your younger self.
You just stare,
for hours if you have to.
The moon’s near full.
Mysterious shapes abound.
The supermarket may be closed
but there’s occasional action
in that parking lot.
Kids doing wheelies.
Maybe some drug sales.
Or even occasional bursts
of cramped passion.
And as for the ones
out on the sidewalk tonight –
they’re at various stages on the way
to becoming who you are.
You haven’t done it all
but you did all you could.
You accept your own frailty.
You give regret a pass.
The next stop is death.
And it grows dark quickly
in that part of the world.
***
John Grey is an Australian poet and a US resident. His poetry was recently published in Homestead Review, Cape Rock and Columbia Review with new work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Poem and Spoon River Poetry Review. Fictional Café was graced with three of his new poems last month. We look forward to his next submission.
