Poems by John Grey

Time to play a little music.
This old guitar and I go way back.
When I was in my twenties,
it was a more than useful chick magnet.
I may not have looked like much
but if you threw in its shiny body,
the ring of those hallowed notes,
the uber-vibrating magic
of transcendental chords,
we made quite an attractive package.
No drummer could compete.
Of course, when it was time
to put the guitar back in its case
and I had to get by on myself alone,
the appeal took a turn for the worse.
So this guitar, in its way,
would build up expectations
only to have them ultimately shattered.
Oddly enough,
that’s what this song’s about.  

JOURNEY TO NOWHERE

The stream, near the bank, is clogged by reeds and algae.
Despite our best paddling, our canoe
drifts into the worst of it, until every inch
of birch and pine is awash in slimy green.

We’re just out for the watery equivalent of a stroll,
on a warm January afternoon
but nature answers to different commands
than our unspoken, “Please let us through.”

A beaver paddles smoothly in the distance.
A loon lands and takes off again,
for clearer waters elsewhere no doubt.
A snowy egret stalks the banks.
Its legs are far too thin to be entangled.
I don’t know whether or not these creatures
are secretly mocking us.
Maybe they just assume that our instincts
are less dependable than theirs.

At least, you’re not blaming me for the situation.
You’re fully aware you didn’t marry Daniel Boone.
And you never claimed to be a backwoodswoman.
Our expressions turn inward to get at where the fault lies.

We abandon ship, push our way out of our dilemma,
like Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn in “The African Queen.”
Some kids on the far shore point and laugh at us.
Of all the surrounding wildlife, only they stoop so low.

A LESSON IN NATURE

I’m with my daughter, knees to ground,
observing fallen leaves, naming the 
trees that gave birth and death to them,
deep into the flotsam of nature
and the way it eventually mulches its way
into the seedings of another round 
of greenness and flower, perfume and color.

Here is a maple. This is an oak.
For now, they’re merely brown reminders
of what was. But, like a child,
they bear the streak of independence,
the will as yet untested
and the rudiments of strength unknown.
And here, father and offspring,
feel like the best combination 
for some gentle learning in the nearby forest.
An old leaf am I, a new shoot is she.