john grey
TO ELSA
FROM HER DROWNED LOVER
You will come
to me
with troubles
rooted in the
past.
You will pick
a moment
when these
words have
most meaning
and then you
will say them
slowly,
softly,
like picking
something
from a thorny
thicket.
Even as it
storms.
Even as
driftwood
slams onto
the shore.
Even as the
oceans
mock you with
the fury,
like your one
infinitesimal death
means
anything to
vast, violent
life.
You don’t
look for crumbs
from this
table of sand.
You don’t
care
that waves
crash down on rocks
as if to take
a million lives
with them.
You will pick
up a shell,
place it
against your ear,
to hear
voices
no matter how
cold, how clammy.
You will say
once we dug
for shells like this
and the wind
slashed,
and the salt
cut,
but we
grabbed so much bounty
from the sea.
John Grey
is an Australian born poet and US resident since late seventies. He works as a
financial systems analyst. He has been recently published in Poem, Kestrel and
Writer’s Bloc with work upcoming in Caveat Lector, Prism International and the
Cider Press Review.