John Grey

MORNING AT BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE

The horizon is the burial ground of so many suns.
Come morning, we get a brand new one.
Some fresh mountains. A lake to replace the old.
All nature. And nothing trying to sell me something.

There’s gold in the water and all day to spend it on.
And a procession of leaves down wind avenue.
The woods leave a trail in case I ever need them.
This day I do. This day and all days.

I sip from a stream to interrupt its journey.
I toss rock against rock like an earthquake in harness.
My veins spread out to all corners of the warmth.
Whenever a bird sings, I am that bird.

AUTUMNAL

What a world –
from the copper leaf
to the stir of breeze.

In autumn,
scarlet is not shame,
merely a hue well chosen.

Bronze maple,
woodpecker hammers home
the surrounding gleam.

Thinning light,
bones of grass,
rustle as one.

Silver water,
grey-green trout,
slowly sleeping.

Cold sure
but put off somewhat
by the first stirrings of fire.

And bodies
at an age
where others have died in theirs.

But safe at home,
braced by sunset,
a kind of outliving.

ABANDONED RAILWAY CARS

It’s a part of New Hampshire
that the Midwest farmlands made remote.
The beauty survives
in lake and river,
forest and sky,
highland and low.

But these railway cars
haven’t moved
in thirty years:
one tanker, one caboose,
one flat bed,
one Pullman for second class passengers,
on a rusty side-track
that goes nowhere.

There is no need
for these wheels to start rolling.
They’re scrap metal in waiting
but there’s no need for scrap metal either.

Flights, Issue Thirteen, August 2024