John Grey ----------- three poems

MAGGIE

She was all about morning light and lost causes.

Had she been born fifty years before,

she’s have taken up arms in the Spanish Civil war.

But her window looked out on discrimination.

And battered wives. And raids on gay bars.

And kids handed rifles and pointed toward the jungle.

She marched more than some armies

but with placards not weaponry.

And she paid for that more than once –

a blackjack across the skull for example,

or a family that just stopped speaking to her.

She was shot at in the South once.

The redneck missed but she figured next time,

she wouldn’t be so lucky.

But she was lucky.

At least, as much as a woman who lived in 

a low-rent flea-trap in the Bronx

could be said to live in sight of fortune’s smile.

She volunteered in food banks,

found shelter for the homeless,

read poetry to inmates,

some of it her own.

She never saw herself as a saint.

Just someone who rose to that morning light.

no matter where the darkness had taken her.

She never married. Nor did she have children.

Her long hair went silver in her thirties.

And then, when AIDS came for her friends,

she tended the dying, accosted the indifferent.

Maggie died in ’93, unreported by the newspapers.

The news even took its time getting out to the ones who knew her.

She’d become more of a hermit by then.

Her health was failing. Her spirit was like a purse

down to its last few grubby pennies.

I like to think that, even in the end,

she kept abreast of the light of the new day.

But then I always like to think.

Maggie liked to do.  

ISABELLE                                                                                         Page One

Fourteen guys you dated.

The first at fifteen,

the last at twenty-five.

One reminded you of your father.

He wasn’t the one you married.

You figure ‘dated’ for an odd kind of word.

Did a movie with friends count?

What about an accidental meeting in a coffee shop?

Will was handsome.

The competition got too fierce,

Dan was cheerful.

That got obnoxious after a while.

You were with Paul for over a year

so the details squeeze together

but you do remember how

there was this kind of acceptance

that he was the one

you’d be spending the rest of your life with

but that fizzled.

And there was Frank.

He really had the mean gene.

Fourteen guys it was.

And surely, they all left some kind

of a mark on you.

None a bruise, thankfully.

But a place in the heart –

even for Joshua

who’s now in an institution.

You could see that coming.

His kisses always felt like symptoms.

Jerry is the one you finally said yes to.

He was the second to ask that question.

Strangely, the two of you didn’t date all that much.

You just hung together.

Neither had much money.

That seemed the cheapest way to honor the arrangement.

ISABELLE                                                                 Page Two

And marriage was just hanging

at a whole other level.

You ate out from time to time

but only because the two of you were hungry

and neither felt like cooking.

And you went out to the movies together.

But that was before the neighborhood was wired for cable.

Maybe that was the problem

with thirteen of the fourteen.

They had no idea how to just be some place.

You’ve been together twenty years now.

You’ve worked. You’ve traveled.

You’ve had kids. And, of course, your own home. 

If it really is a date, then it sure is a long one.

If you’re still just chilling

then you have redefined the word.

THE MOUNTAINEERS

No point in further discussions.

The slopes before us will not hear of it.

And the peak itself points the way,

to inspire, to intimidate, or both.

We are not heroes. Not particularly smart.

But, unlike most dreams, ours take shape.

They rise up before us on the path we’ve taken.

No way we could ever turn around.

Here in the mountains, words know their place.

And so, does normal, from blinding ice glint

to the rumble of distant avalanches

and that stomach-punch of a drop below.

And the rocks’ chilling faces

are out-ogred by the creeping clouds

and a pure-white goat steps lightly up an incline,

grandstanding while we step shakily.

In the village, we were warned of

sudden weather shifts, told of those

who never returned. Even at lower levels,

there is no small talk. 

But here we are, having settled our

affairs, triple-kissed our loved ones, 

calmed their fears with our excitement,

and have struggled halfway toward the summit.

And in the mountains, there is nothing

we can say to each other. We just go on.

We know what we have set out to do.

Dangerous yes but, as ever, in our best interests.