7/11/19

MAKING MY WAY BACK TO CAMP
By John Grey


My surroundings
are slowly consumed by darkness,
an upper jaw of sky,
a lower of rocky soil.

It swallows the theodora stand
down to its roots,
piles on the nesting xotls.
Valleys go quietly.
Even the distant hills
are ultimately gulped
to nothingness.

Sure, a moon rises
but it’s ineffectual,
until joined by another,
and then a third.

These modest satellites
band together,
focus their reflected shine
on a hollow here,
a tree trunk there,
even a man
who’s trudging through the gloom.

The Zanxian night
makes a meal of the light
but leaves me crumbs enough.


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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.