“Evensong”, “The Human Rings”, “Making Flower Wine” and “An Afternoon at the Lake”
By John Grey
EVENSONG
I cannot see her
but someone’s rustling the bed sheets,
opening the dresser drawer.
I’m in one room
but that doesn’t stop
the other rooms from happening.
Her footsteps creak
the cold hardwood
like snapping twigs on trails.
So much her movement
feels like a product of my stillness
listening.
A shuffle,
a crackle,
a breath between.
THE HUMAN RINGS
The elderly occupy
the park’s outer benches
while the meadow at its heart
swarms with the young.
Unlike a tree,
the inner rings
are the liveliest,
nudging the old farther and farther
from the center,
where the chill can have at them,
turn flesh to bark,
crack their brittle bones.
But birds gather together,
no matter their generations.
In lieu of generations,
they form flocks.
MAKING FLOWER WINE
Dry sunny day, no urgency,
on your knees, bowing to the earth,
gather dandelion, clover or honeysuckle,
whatever the soil is flush with,
in flourishing June light,
strip away the green,
stow them in a pot
with the rind of oranges and lemons,
add steamy hot water,
seal your concoction
when not stirring your mixture twice a day,
to let it know a human hand
is the difference between a soggy mess
and a flowerful libation,
then, four days hence,
decant the liquid, press the pulp,
add those lizard-eye sized raisins,
citrus juice and sugar,
carefully, deliberately,
like raising a child,
and don’t forget the malic acid,
yeast extract, grape tannin,
then sink your teeth into stirring,
hard and invigorating for both the maker
and what’s being made,
then tweak the must to SG 1.100,
ferment to 1.030,
then pour your nascent ambrosia
into the enormity of a gallon jug,
lock out the air,
then wait and rack and rack again,
over days and weeks,
until the fluid is clear,
and the sediment left behind,
as you bring out the bottles
and, with great ceremony,
fill each of them in turn,
then crack one open
on some special occasion,
at sunset perhaps, on the porch,
clinking half-filled glasses
with a loved one,
who smiles, says,
“This is awesome –
what is it? where is it from?”
but stay silent,
peer out at the dandelion heads,
the clover blossoms, honeysuckle blooms,
scattered throughout the yard,
all fellow conspirators.
all willing to keep a secret.
AN AFTERNOON AT THE LAKE
Cormorant, wings spread, dries itself on a low-hanging branch. Ducks get the oil, it figures. I’m stuck with the long neck. Fish look up at the shadow of what could still devour them. I must have repeated the name of that bird a hundred times. “It’s not an eagle. Not a hawk. It’s a cormorant. C-o-r-m-o-r-a-n-t.” I often spell my way into other people’s ignorance.
Bessie places her head on my shoulder. It was either that or the grass,
Follow through on touch and you come to a real person.
Bessie. B-e-s-s-i-e. And me. M-e. Besides, the grass is damp.
It’s lakeside after all. Plenty of mallards. Gliding above,
kicking like water polo players below. So many analogies come to mind,
I don’t even try. And the cormorant’s back in action.
It’s speared a fish this time. Spectators gasp. “How cruel.”
What do they expect? Fish markets don’t serve cormorants.
Children run everywhere. Their parents have ordered them to enjoy themselves.
Play includes stumbling over the prone bodies of Bessie and I.
It’s a great Earth but why do I have to share it with everybody?
Afternoon drags on. I’m reading by this. Bessie’s sleeping.
Dostoevsky is buried in his Siberian house of the dead.
A cool breeze mugs the heat. Trees rustle. Too bad, the reception’s bad in Russia. If only their dour writers could see all this. No one worries about the next meal. But the name of a bird – that’s another story. And I’m the story teller. Cormorant. C-o-r-m-o-r-a-n-t. And trout. T-r-o-u-t. No, I don’t know it’s a trout. Show me finned and scaled and silver – and it’s your turn to spell dace or plate. It’s starting to look a lot like twilight. Bessie wakens, reckons I’ll need her brightness in the hours ahead. I kiss her cheek. C-h-e-e-k. It’s the body part most in tune with our love these days. I could press my lips to those soft, puffy mounds of flesh and not even be aware her lips are just around the corner. The cormorant heads off to its roost. It’s weary of having its life so closely witnessed, its name so deliberately spelled.
The lake is dark. Mallards congregate on the far shore. Temporary nature lovers revert to permanent suburbanites. Huggers of other people reclaim their hands, their arms, for utility. Cormorants are up in their roosts, are joined by others of their kind. Kids run toward the car, already flexing their video game fingers. Parents trail, clutching dismembered picnic gear. It’s not a place of rare beauty. It’s like my affection for Bessie. Comfortable. And her feeling for me. Better than a wet head. That’s feeling. C-o-r-m-o-r-a-n-t.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
