{"id":15496,"date":"2024-12-05T07:18:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T05:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15496"},"modified":"2024-12-04T23:21:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T21:21:39","slug":"poems-by-john-grey-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15496","title":{"rendered":"poems by John Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Refugees<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some people<\/p>\n

can\u2019t stay where they are.<\/p>\n

As determined by<\/p>\n

no home, empty pockets<\/p>\n

and ragged clothes,<\/p>\n

they have to be moving.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So they fall in<\/p>\n

with a line already formed,<\/p>\n

nudge forward<\/p>\n

at the pace of the one ahead,<\/p>\n

the one behind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Each step<\/p>\n

is one farther away from war,<\/p>\n

nearer to the next callus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a local coffee shop<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The teenage boy<\/p>\n

in jeans and blue sweater,<\/p>\n

wearing glasses,<\/p>\n

and with a trace of acne<\/p>\n

around the chin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

occasionally glances<\/p>\n

at a teenage girl<\/p>\n

with long brown hair,<\/p>\n

and braces<\/p>\n

at a nearby table.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maybe he<\/p>\n

finds her attractive.<\/p>\n

Maybe he\u2019s just<\/p>\n

practicing how to glance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A country boy in a big city bar<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A dazzling patch of ripe tomatoes.<\/p>\n

Enough red to get a bull riled up.<\/p>\n

For a man in t-shirt and faded jeans,<\/p>\n

nirvana is local and farm-fresh..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rough hands shaking loose a fork full of hay.<\/p>\n

A willing jockey high up in a tractor\u2019s saddle.<\/p>\n

In a big-city bar, no one knows this of you.<\/p>\n

Alcohol and neon are the biggest liars going.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some woman clings to your right arm\u2019s muscle.<\/p>\n

She has no idea of your sinew\u2019s source.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a total stranger to her. In a fancy bar,<\/p>\n

you don\u2019t even know yourself all that well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her assessment of you is cursory.\u00a0 In her eyes,<\/p>\n

you\u2019re awkward but attractive. And it\u2019s a relief<\/p>\n

to her that, unlike the others in the bar, you lack<\/p>\n

sarcasm, can\u2019t spit a spray of caustic zingers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But you refuse to be looked down upon.<\/p>\n

You have land, a substance that eludes the Wall<\/p>\n

Street types. It\u2019s an extension of your skin. There\u2019s<\/p>\n

soil under your nails for a reason. You muck out stalls.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You shovel horse manure. But you\u2019ve seen the<\/p>\n

best of what can grow. You live with what your hands<\/p>\n

can do. Sure, the woman\u2019s attractive. There\u2019s something<\/p>\n

of a rain-shower in her, the kind thar breaks a drought.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the country, you don heavy boots<\/p>\n

because you don\u2019t trust cow patties.<\/p>\n

Here, you wear your one pair of good shoes.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re beginning to like what you\u2019re standing in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After the wedding<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first night departed, first morning likewise,<\/p>\n

and then some days, and then some more.<\/p>\n

We survived the first phase of our wedded selves,<\/p>\n

by believing, so intensely, the mirage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And it was there whenever we reached out to it.<\/p>\n

First year, passion interspersed with discovery.<\/p>\n

In the second, we came out of occasional storms<\/p>\n

crying like gulls, but returning dutifully to the nest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We no more hungered outside the two of us.<\/p>\n

We made a home like an island off shore,<\/p>\n

that was, at first, startled to be there<\/p>\n

but, eventually, settled into its sleepy waters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We never thought how much our single lives<\/p>\n

perished the moment we each said \u201cI do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bird that soars but ends up later<\/p>\n

as a roadside feast for carrion crows<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

never made it as a correlation.<\/p>\n

Whether we\u2019re together or alone, we look<\/p>\n

like people who are always in each other\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

We are strange to all who haven\u2019t married yet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Six months into a drought<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Across aging sky, clouds appear<\/p>\n

with all their music inside them,<\/p>\n

immortal songs that these ears<\/p>\n

barely remember, rehearsed in the lab<\/p>\n

or in heaven, to be sung, we dare hope,<\/p>\n

by this particular choir –<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

for water feels the same thirst<\/p>\n

as the soil that calls to it<\/p>\n

but can give no clue to its intent,<\/p>\n

only its location, floating above land<\/p>\n

where farmers sow seed in clear conscience,<\/p>\n

pray, in one silence, to science or to God,<\/p>\n

for reclamation or, better yet,<\/p>\n

a premature resurrection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Refugees   Some people can\u2019t stay where they are. As determined by no home, empty pockets<\/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":[1730,77],"tags":[1728,1123,1393],"class_list":["post-15496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-83","category-english","tag-egophobia-83","tag-english","tag-john-grey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-41W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496","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=15496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15497,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496\/revisions\/15497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}