by John Grey
The forked leaves of a silver maple
were once as a foreign
as Yiddish or junks on the Yangtse-Kiang.
And now I live in tandem
with their cycles.
I’ve moved in with crabapple
and American plum,
the screech of blue jays
and the cardinal’s
wait wait wait cheer cheer cheer.
I married a woman.
And bedded down with strange new landscape.
In May,
pink blossoms flood the lawn.
In January,
the grass is frosted white.
I surrendered so much of course:
ghost-like eucalypts, brash lantana,
rainbow lorikeets, the mad laugh of the kookaburra.
And I’ve given up friends
but this isn’t about people.
An old permanence has been replaced
by a new perpetuity.
Trees change color –
from lush to pastel piquant –
and then they shed.
My first winter,
I looked out on the death
of every living thing.
But now their skeletons
work for me.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.
