John Grey

A workman at st. Peters

He’s installing organ pipes

in a hundred-year-old church,

giving breath to granite walls,

high stained-glass windows

that cast holy shadows across stone floors.

Purchased from years of small donations,

the organ sits high at the side of the altar,

awaits its lungs, its nostrils.

For so long, the choir has sung

to their own music,

luminous sure,

but in need of a chest

to provide for their voices.

Under his diligence,

flue goes here, reed there,

props in resonation,

conduits to the airstream.

The church

is of a Christian mind,

boasts a heart of spirit,

limbs of pews and vestibules,

and now this.

poem of the light

The secret of believing

is to possess

the most priceless thing

in the universe,

is to have it

in a world that has no way

of teaching me to find it,

is to believe in the believing,

that what is sought

cannot be found,

that whoever has spirit enough

to wait for it

discovers that it comes

to them eventually.

I see people who seem to know

but I don’t follow them.

No staggered run

across the rocky plains

after the crazy man.

No following the glitter

of shaman fingers

into the sparkling woods.

The echo of my heart-beat,

my thoughts, my footsteps,

walking through this world

is all the litanies I need,

my silent tongue

at peace in my mouth,

the only hallelujah.

I am reminded of the light,

how it can cut through

the darkness at any time,

in any place,

how I am not the cause

of it being here,

only the result

of my being in it.

The painting of saint sebastian

I imagine myself bringing water

to his parched lips,

hands reaching above

the arrows that dig into his flesh

to wet the winter death

with cool spring.

My tiny cup of liquid

would bring a smile

where there was only sacrifice,

like all fresh, Wet things

would triumph with tenderness.

I see pain

but I believe ministrations.

I find beauty destroyed,

faith sated and unharmed.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, “Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.