11/1/18

CONSTELLATIONS
By John Grey

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Constellations in the night sky,
connected only by how we see the distance.
suns as random as our thoughts
but forming lions and water bearers –


like disparate people through the years,
no association between themselves
until I map them in my earthbound sphere


join a sparkling seven year old girl in pigtails
to the burning gases of a mother
pinning shirts and trousers to a clothes line
and a teenage comet
alighting occasionally on my lips
and a woman in nova white dress and train
fighting inner tremble down an aisle -
I chart pectus pectorus - a heart -


I link works of art to books read.
Bach to the Rolling Stones,
a train ride through Connecticut
to the Angel falls -
my life's all ars minor,
eo ire itum.
musica major -


then it's back to the night sky,
the twinkling latitudes.
the howl, the head, the gleaming Y shape -
or is that Michelle or Vancouver
or the last note of the Eroica -


I’m some of what we all are -
some exclusively inside myself.


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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Evening Street Review and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.