{"id":15033,"date":"2023-12-15T07:22:44","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T05:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15033"},"modified":"2023-12-18T08:24:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T06:24:13","slug":"poems-by-john-grey-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15033","title":{"rendered":"poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Handover <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of the work day, sun setting,<\/p>\n

park my car by the stream,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

walk along the banks, stop to watch<\/p>\n

minnows gather in the stillness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other side, a woodchuck<\/p>\n

gets in the last few mouthfuls of grass<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

before shadows nudge him back to his den.<\/p>\n

Same with the rabbits that nibble<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

in the safety of near-invisibility.<\/p>\n

The sky is shedding the last of the blue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Birds hunker down in nests or roosts.<\/p>\n

The darkness encourages a bat or two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A firefly launches its brief but brilliant<\/p>\n

appeal to the opposite sex.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of my work day, beginning of so<\/p>\n

many others. A racoon. A fox.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A couple of teenagers, arm in arm,<\/p>\n

strolling in my direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I hold a place for them<\/p>\n

until they reach where I am standing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Watching the loggerheads<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This April night, the tiny loggerheads<\/p>\n

are on the move from nest to ocean.<\/p>\n

I watch with flashlight from the rocks above<\/p>\n

as so many scramble through sea-grass and sand,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

cruelly exposed to predators like gulls<\/p>\n

and the owls of the salt marsh, who dive and grab<\/p>\n

the hatchlings, devour them brutally, quickly,<\/p>\n

so they can get on with pillaging some more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The birds squawk with unholy pleasure,<\/p>\n

for the pickings are splendid, numerous,<\/p>\n

enough to feed themselves and family,<\/p>\n

gorge themselves in case of famine ahead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most turtles do not survive this precarious marathon.<\/p>\n

Only the lucky few waddle into foam, float and flap<\/p>\n

their flippers, disappear into the belly of the waves<\/p>\n

and more danger from big and hungry fish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So why am I here, witness to kill after kill,<\/p>\n

taking the loggerhead\u2019s side but in awe of their killers?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s painful to see persistence go so cruelly unrewarded,<\/p>\n

but I can\u2019t equate survival with murder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Enough turtles will defy long odds, return in adulthood<\/p>\n

to ply the sand with thousands more eggs.<\/p>\n

It may look like a bloody, violent shooting gallery.<\/p>\n

But even the targets get a prize at the end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was no good loss<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your ex-husband was a thief<\/p>\n

you tell me<\/p>\n

though the stuff the cops found<\/p>\n

stashed under some sheets<\/p>\n

in the back of your trailer<\/p>\n

was hardly an embarrassment of riches –<\/p>\n

at least, he didn’t involve you,<\/p>\n

signed a statement proclaiming<\/p>\n

you knew nothing of the robbery –<\/p>\n

but he did involve you –<\/p>\n

you were now the wife<\/p>\n

of a convicted felon –<\/p>\n

he didn’t serve time for what he did<\/p>\n

having no prior record<\/p>\n

or, at least, never having been caught before,<\/p>\n

so you served time for him,<\/p>\n

working two waitress jobs to get by<\/p>\n

because nobody would hire him –<\/p>\n

the highlight of your day<\/p>\n

was changing from your grubby pink diner outfit<\/p>\n

to the all-demure-black of the Italian restaurant –<\/p>\n

his time was spent drinking and watching TV –<\/p>\n

and then he left you<\/p>\n

because some fool woman<\/p>\n

was dumb enough to be impressed by<\/p>\n

flabby muscles and tasteless tattoos –<\/p>\n

and you cried, you admit,<\/p>\n

embarrassed for being upset at losing<\/p>\n

what anyone in their right mind<\/p>\n

would be ecstatic to be rid of\u00a0 –<\/p>\n

that’s what comes of your life<\/p>\n

being made of other people,<\/p>\n

is your slant on it –<\/p>\n

they leave and you\u2019re<\/p>\n

suddenly adrift, depleted –<\/p>\n

yes, he was a thief<\/p>\n

even when he wasn\u2019t stealing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Handover   End of the work day, sun setting, park my car by the stream,   walk along the banks, stop to watch minnows gather in the stillness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1676,77],"tags":[1677,1123,1393],"class_list":["post-15033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-78","category-english","tag-egophobia-78","tag-english","tag-john-grey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3Ut","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15034,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15033\/revisions\/15034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}