THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Seek out the spark.
Silver-scales flicker in copper dusk,
belly-deep in shallows.
A fish shimmies just within my gaze,
unaware of eyes across the bank.
Hands twitch with eagerness and line.
One dart crisscrosses another.
One swish and it vanishes,
leaving the kind of unwrinkled ripple
that only a ghost could make.
Not beautiful, not holy either,
but glows in its ignorance,
it wears shimmer like an evening dress,
dances as if it knows no predator,
as if the hook is its own instinct
and not that metal thing bobbing
in the water.
LANDS OF DROUGHT
If only the magpies and cockatoos
pitched in with the seeding,
instead of stealing the last of the barley
like feathered masked bandits.
The fields stretch wide, sadly sown,
sunburnt ledger of solitary labour.
And my silos are as hollow as a bird’s bones.
Summer lays claim and offers nothing.
A long, dry siege where dreams peek out
between nightmare’s teeth. Even the soil knows --
it clumps in my palm like the ghost of work.
I’m its servant. It’s retired.
Each day arrives full as an empty drum:
from end to end, absurd rows of nothing.
I’m a farmer — no, a resident of dust.
A scarecrow by trade:
sticks in a hand-me-down shirt,
some straw stitched at haste.
IN A STEEL TOWN
Noise factories
churn out red-hot steel.
Chimneys feed the air.
The sky nibbles on the ash.
Clouds swallow hard.
Smog coats the lungs
with slag heaps
for illustration.
Eyes burn.
Everything tastes
of iron and carbon.
Some say the money’s good.
But no one knows
what’s good about it.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, Trampoline and Flights. His latest books — Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires — are available through Amazon. He has work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International
Borderless 