1/24/18

ANOTHER MORNING ON ALTURA
By John Grey


Machines pump oxygen
while a heart speaks like a lover.
and surely, between the hum of the computers,
the nightingale has come
to chirp by the star-lit window.

All new and strange but it's
a familiar eye that collects the fire
from suns and carries it to a breast
to ensure the dawn's brightness.

When an explorer dreams,
he makes a place in the bedding for earth,
a lover who seeps through his lowered guard,
fades slowly into him.

As a sleeper awakes,
the safety of function moves willingly aside
for the cozy wildness of remembered touch.

On a planet, three solar systems hence,
old reflections gather in faces.

In a place of red sky,
waves from that least cosmic of beaches
leap across the light years,
roll up on a purple shore.

Each planet, he bestrides,
he offers like a pendant
for her soft, white throat.

He gathers odd-shaped flowers
from a scarlet bush,
the rouge of her cheeks
still flush in them.


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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.