BUS OUT OF TOWN
The kids in the seat behind me
are already pushing and shoving each other.
They’ll be bored out of their tiny skulls
before the bus even gets to Worcester.
We take Grand Street out of town,
and pass an estate sale
at one of the mansions
that once housed prosperous mill-owners.
The sloping front lawn
is like a giant green shelf
piled with boxes and evening clothes,
antique chairs and tables
and, as a genuine gift to poets,
an escritoire and an armoire.
I didn’t need to see this
to know it was time to leave
this dying town.
But the buyers sure do look like vultures
as they pick among books and jewelry.
My guess is they’re not
from around here.
The kids, done fighting, are now
whining to their parents,
“We got nothing to do.”
So take a bus out of here,
I want to tell them.
But wait – they’re already doing that.
NARRAGANSETT BEACH IN AUGUST
This is a town of seaside pleasure
from barefoot steps on sand
to flights of terns and shearwaters.
The beach is fragmented
by waves coming and going,
skittery sandpipers, darting sanderlings,
but there’s enough
wet and dry for all.
Here the world is bird-nesting cliff-face
dunes that rise soft as clouds
and rocks offshore
that bear the brunt of brief battering.
Fun is democratic:
old man and woman
in chairs shaded by umbrella,
young women on towels tanning gently,
children splashing in shallows,
older siblings bobbing in the deep.
The sky towers overall.
The sun smells of salt.
And, every now and then,
somebody laughs for no reason.
Little used on the day,
the mind doesn’t mind at all.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. His latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. He has upcoming work in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Flights.
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