By John Grey Familiar Surroundings We’re back and everything is how we left it: our feet walk in old footsteps, our hands leave fingerprint where fingerprints already are. We’ve been away some time, a month or more, but the familiar doesn’t change. One room still leads to another. The ceiling is where it’s always been, … Continue reading Familiar Surroundings and Other Poems
The Fate of the Poem and Other Poems
By John Grey The Fate Of The Poem I let it go and the wind took it, or was that the mail. It had a thousand mile trek ahead of it through six states and who knows how much rain soaked it, how many dogs chewed it, which spotty teenage girl mistook it for a … Continue reading The Fate of the Poem and Other Poems
Room Without Company and Other Poems
By John Grey Room Without Company A room without company is as lonely as a blank sheet of paper. But then I start to write something on that paper. The words don’t just appear – they join me. When someone enters, the paradigm takes a shift from within me to without. I set aside the … Continue reading Room Without Company and Other Poems
The Briefest of Relationships and Other Poems
By John Grey The Briefest of Relationships Traffic crawled, head-lamps swam in exhaust cloud for block after interminable block. The road itself idled. Six hundred cars followed suit. The driver ahead of me crawled to a stop. My foot pressed down hard on the much-reviled brake. She leaned out of the window. Featureless back of … Continue reading The Briefest of Relationships and Other Poems
The Toyota Concert and Other Poems
By John Grey The Toyota Concert I admit it. I sing loudly all the way home. Beatle hits from my youth. Standards from Broadway shows. Anything from the great mind morass, that never has to wonder why this tune, why now, as I pull over to the exit lane and the other cars zip by … Continue reading The Toyota Concert and Other Poems
Where the Water Falls and Other Poems
By John Grey Where the Water Falls It cascades silver and foam from craggy heights down the rutted black face of sheer cliff. On contact with the river, in endless hiss, it replaces itself with more of itself. It cannot tie a shoelace, row a boat or boil a kettle. It merely does what I … Continue reading Where the Water Falls and Other Poems
Poems by John Grey
I’LL WRITE MINE, YOU WRITE YOURS I was barely born when I was suddenly the man of the house. My father died. I wept of course but only because I was hungry. I should have grown up fast but I didn’t. My mother and my three older sisters saw to that. Without … Continue reading Poems by John Grey
Poems by John Grey
MORNING AT THE COTTAGE A gift from night chill, from the dry wind grace, from the incomparable red-rimmed morning sunlight in a slow spread everywhere... deep the earth becomes, endless mystic fervor; feel the freshened wind through oak's forked bough, fragrance of honey from each old hollow. Shadows spread far, strike the nostrils in a … Continue reading Poems by John Grey
Poems by John Grey
GUITAR The oldest, dearest friend I have and yet there's never been a poem about you, my precious guitar of steel on spruce and melancholy sweet tone. I rest you on my lap so you can play for me, touch your frets, your strings lightly like tapping in a combination number that will … Continue reading Poems by John Grey
Poems by John Grey
SPLENDOR, THE NATURAL VARIETY I'm enamored of splendor. Especially the natural variety. Like this lake smooth as glass but for the ripple of a loon passing. And mountains, though I've no wish to climb them, make a perfect backdrop. As do the deer nibbling at the forest edge. My current mood is rare but … Continue reading Poems by John Grey
Academy of the Heart And Mind 