NO ONE SINCE
You taught me to fish when I was nine,
to thread the hook between tiny minnow lips,
to pick the right spot where the trout are running.
No one since has taken me in hand in quite
that way: how to make lures form shiny metal,
the use of grapples to shake out crabs.
No hand has ever held as steady over mine
as yours, me reeling in the biggest I ever caught,
you just as surely reeling me no more than necessary.
Twilight and I’d beg you stay but no, you’d drive me home.
For we could have lived in the wilderness, just the two of us,
filling our creels with three meals a day, cooking
our catch over a sizzling fire, no roof, no walls,
no women, no school, no bed by eight, no up at seven.
No one since has borne the scars of where all that regret was heading.
OUR WINTER ENEMY
Rumble of winter storm,
not the electric blast of summer,
but the pounding of an old army,
restless to regain past glories,
getting up on the chilliest morning
to fight the bitter fight.
And what weapons.
Temperature that drops like
groceries from a burst brown bag.
North wind,
a Gatling gun of cold.
Look at the telephone wires.
The eaves of the houses.
No daggers thrown
and yet they land,
they pierce.
And snow, ceaseless snow.
No two flakes alike
but ten billion of them
no different from the last time.
JOHN GREY is an Australian-born poet, US resident since late seventies. Works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Slant, Briar Cliff Review, and Albatross; with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and REAL.
