Lake Ghosts
I love that morning lake fog.
It’s the nearest I ever come
to seeing ghosts.
There is my mother and father,
my three sisters,
misting up in the tranquil transition
of night into day.
We had our disagreements
when they were alive.
But now they’re no longer here,
they walk on water.
A Teenager’s Wheels
I watch my father command the wheel
as he guides the car in and out
of highway traffic
at sixty miles an hour,
eyes and hands and feet
as coordinated as a fencer’s.
Or he’s in the passenger seat,
giving lessons with nothing more
than expression,
as I nervously nudge the vehicle forward
across the expanse
of a college parking lot.
We’re so often in the car together.
Like fishing is for some,
it’s our bondage.
For all the attention paid
to the way ahead,
there’s always a sideways glance involved
and the sense that, like love,
driving is unsuited to solitude.
Yet I can’t wait
to venture out on my own,
license tucked inside my wallet,
every street at my disposal,
one eye on the road,
one eye on the passenger seat
that will look so lost and forlorn
until it’s filled by someone.
Cedar Waxwings
January,
a high, thin cry of zee
draws me to the window.
Cedar waxwings
flash gray velvet feathers
from a nearby bush.
They peck through snow
at barely visible berries,
load up on winter’s chaff
to see them through the lean.
There’s something in a bill,
so small it barely warrants
the lift of a head while swallowing.
But the flock is relentless,
under orders from survival,
pecking furiously
even at nothingness.
My gaze is crystallized
in a window pane,
their essence likewise.
They’re too busy to notice me.
Even if they did,
I doubt that I’d astound their living.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest books, Leaves On Pages and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon.
