Allison Grayhurst

this end

This end is an offspring

to tend to and adore,

breaking through distinctive patterns

that worked for a while, but now,

only harm.

This offspring is musical,

composing practices and prayers,

hungering for the details

to disinfect and clean.

This joy is unspoken, 

activity with no burdensome description,

uninfected with expectations, obligations

or the guarding dog.

This house has been lived in,

all things that have died have died

again, deeper, and finally here, renewed.

Faith is the exact destination, lapping the plate

sparkling so all that is left is awe and mercy, digesting

simplicity in the swelling brightness before me.

I have you again like at the start 

when I first witnessed your face 

and hair and eyes and loved you 

with a bliss that in the past 

I could only steal from books but now 

I owned, uniquely as my own.

Trees hang over the cliff.

Behind me is the summit.

My foolish hopes align

with divinity’s commands.

Bars are dropped, lightweight like pins.

Moon and sun full, clearly visible 

in the same morning sky.

homecoming

Returning to the kelp forest

as a companion to a larger inhabitant,

as a guest to the great reef waters,

a lover of the odd and miraculous,

seduced by succulent influences,

descending then rising all in good speed.

I welcome the sand dwellers 

and the tunnel diggers. I am welcomed 

by the tentacled and the fanged,

and by the soft, squishy translucent floaters.

I am just another creature that eats or will be eaten,

and I relish in this environment of unquestioning acceptance

my minuscule place.

I ride the back of the bottom feeder. I find my own

way through the caves, avoiding the high price

of this liberty.

I have returned and I am not leaving 

for a more agreeable, less authentic reality. 

My form is older, broken, degenerating, but 

I feel it again, my nerves, 

secret sensations, glorious intensity,

awakening like during the first fall, 

like the first time waiting

to being caught, irrevocably

saved.

jesus holds

Nudging, pushing

foot-tripping to

kindle a dream that

runs publicized on every

channel, uttering its good fortune,

lined up with divine commands.

The abyss is an arrow shot right through,

splitting what doesn’t belong from

the thriving harvest. If you try to

cross it, you will fall into it,

for the health of the harvest cannot be soiled

with past inclusions. 

Promises made are finding

fruition and greed and bitterness

have diffused into a calm surrender

to the unknown.

This friendship lasts forever, 

it does not let go

in the wake of an attaching darkness. 

It banishes anger, exposes 

scars covering the face 

and under layered clothes. 

This friendship demands no other

connection as strong as its own,

peels away the scaly scabs inside the ears, 

adds up all dividends, then pays out without

scratching or lashing

the spinning inner sacred core.

Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Five times nominated for “Best of the Net,” she has over 1375 poems published in over 525 international journals. She has 25 published books of poetry and 6 chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts.