Camping Out & More…

By John Grey

Camping Out

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The night is the sky mostly.

Trees are one heaped shadow.

The lake’s lost to its shore.

Mountains retreat beyond the eye.

Only high, do shapes remain.

.

My fire gives details to my face

but no one’s here to see.

My sleeping roll

unfolds to its edges

and no further.

Shadow, night, sleep, blackness –

I’m at the rim

of every known dark.

Hunger

Hunger tells you stories

of hot wind across desert,

of sheet lightning,

of trembling guts and empty pockets.

.

When the city noise

is too loud for it to shout over,

it keeps the tale going from inside you,

becomes more circumspect,

speaks with a crackle,

like an old phonograph record

of a politician giving a speech.

.

Hunger needs an audience

and it always knows where to find you,

under the same overpass,

with the usual cronies,

all green teeth, ratty hair

and breath like gasoline. 

.

Sometimes hunger comes in disguise

as thirst,

and it encourages you

to take a swig from that bottle you found

that could be whiskey,

could even be kerosene.

.

Hunger can sing soft but compelling

in the voice of the one who last

provided you with three meals a day.

That’s years ago now.

Hunger has no memory

but it assumes that you do.

Death Valley

.

Sand abbreviates a ghost town’s story,

shutters the mine,

buries the roads leading in and out.

.

A lesser history gives birth to saltbush,

No trees. No shadows. 

The sun’s advance is unstoppable.

.

Grainy winds

blow from the West

Dust devils dance

on the rocky floor.

That’s it for movement.

.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.

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