A MAN WHO’S NOT AT HOMEAs those eyes peer intently at me, I expect to find somebody home. I call out his name, gently rub the back of his hand, but no word answers the door I have more of him in my apartment than he does in his body – the old photographs, the yellowed newspaper clippings, the awards, the letters. Yet here, he cracks his knuckles, wheezes, snaps his jaw. Sounds echo through his empty rooms. HOW IT ALL WORKSEveryone is alone in the world as, one by one, they emerge from their swaddle, tentative, fearful, heads bowed, found wanting by what they imagine themselves to be. Eyes confounded by the unknown, they move with their heads turned in a different direction. And their mouths are from a time before there were tongues. There’s no easy way to speak to one another. In a world without fate, they would totter and fall eventually. They would run dry of reasons to be living at all. But a voice out of nowhere suddenly names them. Instinctively, they hear only what they need to hear. THE OLD WOMAN KNITS AND SINGSThe thread and song twist around each other. As intimate as fingers, so goes the throat. Twilight weave lifts the heart, and a melody recalls her people. Could be a sweater, a napkin, a bib. Could be the anthem of a forgotten race. Needles click notes to a skein of tune. Her eyes wrinkle deep in weathered purls. A DREAMTIME FLOWIt is a river in a dream, slow and drowsy, ignoring its current half the time, to linger where it sees boys playing, leaving water behind here and there for swimming holes. It’s been a river for centuries but forty years back is enough for me to get my sleepy head around, connect with swinging ropes and fishing lines, and splashing laughter. It avoids the maps that give it name and shape. It’s attracted by imagination. That’s the spring that birthed it. That’s as far as it needs to flow. THE BELLSMay I borrow your chances, ringing bells, heard and loved by everyone, even the hermit behind the blind, the boy with the nose-bleed, the incurable, the pious who mistake the clanging notes for singing angels. I’m weary of living disappointed, like a fluttery candle, more wick than flame. I’m tired of goodbyes, of the last few drops of something in a bottle, of feeling like prey in a predator’s downtown Listen. If only I could pull my own ropes, set my music in motion. Thumping axes don’t rate. Nor do hammer and nails. I’m reduced to the simple things, Even if you could hear me, you’d never mistake my noises for a song. But the bell is a handshake. It’s a hug. A sweet feeling on the tongue. A rise in the chest. A swelling of the heart. People hear, are transfixed, turn round to see where the ringing is coming from. Bells, just once, when the music stops, let me be standing there. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Rathalla Review and Open Ceilings.
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