SELLING UP
Never thought your last hours
in this house would be as
keeper of the basement,
with the old furnace
and boxes of musty papers,
your father’s tools,
the webs with their dark,
secret spiders.
You never imagined you could
ever bear to sell this house
but now you find it’s
like those blouses, dresses,
two sizes too small
and out of style anyhow.
Finally, you couldn’t wait
to get rid of it,
a house, too cumbersome,
too demanding, to store memories in.
With the worry of it off your mind,
it can be the lives lived in it
once more.
A little sun pokes through
the clouded windows,
fractured rays of light
to match your scattered insights.
A touch of love here,
a comforting hand there.
A good meal,
a warm fire.
A cozy bed,
the echo of old laughter.
Above, you can hear
the murmur of the real estate agent
telling potential buyers
everything this house is not.
And there you are,
down below, immersed
in its selling points.
THE PACK
Her life is solitaire,
a hundred or more games a day.
Mostly she loses.
And even when she cheats,
the cards still refuse to fall her way.
The suits are worn with age,
sticky from spilled coffee.
But she’s not ready to replace them.
They’re her companions.
And, unlike their flesh and blood equivalents,
they do not die on her.
Sure, they show up as a jack
when an ace would have done
so much better,
or they’re black when red is needed,
or they willfully hide, upside down,
at the bottom of a pile.
But there’s always the next hand,
always more cards to be dealt.
There’s something about
plastic-coated paper.
With the mere touch of it,
she’s one of the pack.
CARNIVAL
I love rinky-dink carnivals
with Ferris wheels of six gondolas
and three-horse carousels.
Imagine a love like that,
in the candy-cane glisten of summer,
where you stop at the top
and the moon’s only
half your height nearer,
or you spin round and round
in an arc so downsized,
you never quite leave where you are.
Imagine a love that wins you
a fist full of cheap trinkets,
and a button-eyed bear
with his stuffing burst loose.
And just for knocking down
some tin cans with a baseball.
The prizes are worth less
than the cost of participating.
Imagine a love like that.
I could name you at least three.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.