Pavel

Odd name, difficult to pronounce,
personality a cipher, mouth a fog,
sometimes the eyes squeezed upward
as if the main course at a lynching,
and speech sharp but intermittent
like volleys pinging into a spittoon,
no time for melodrama, but sleep
spreads over him like cumulus
when he's not otherwise engaged.
Pavel, I've brought a book to read.
Words spill from my tongue to his ear
for no one's benefit but duty.
Played the piano once, his relatives
assure me, though now his hands
have no earthly use and his wife prods food
between his lips with varying success.
And he fought in battle, though which war
no one remembers, could have been the
Crimean for all I and the scars on his upper arm know.
The blood in his veins is no more use that that he spilled.
So it is, we stumble through a chapter.
Children draw near to listen. They are Pavel now.
Maybe they'll stay in their heads longer than he has.
If not, we're on chapter five of the book, the life.

The Cottage in Maine

A tinge of brown emerges
through the morning mist
on the lake,
a rump, then an arched neck,
an odd-shaped head like
a bull-terrier crossed with a cow.
You're getting the fire started.
The sun is doing the same
for the outside.
It's a gentle race to see
who will warm my bones the soonest.
"It's a moose," I shout.
I've seen a hundred but
the hundred and first's
just like the first.
It weighs down on the surface
like the light's anchor.
Body still as stone,
rack wide and heavy,
skin drooping from its neck,
only the lips are moving.
Watch long enough
and it's hard to imagine a Maine morning
without a hearth crackling
in the background,
a lumbering beast feasting on
marsh grass.
Moose...
the words roll off my tongue,
shambling, homely, awkward, dumb.
Find the beauty in that.
the morning dares me.
But God's such a clumsy maker of creatures,
often a heart where the head should be.

John Grey: Australian born poet, playwright, musician. Latest book is What Else Is There from Main Street Rag. Recently in The English Journal, The Pedestal, Pearl and the Journal Of The American Medical Association.

Email: John Grey

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