Gray clouds,
if I get out from under them
I can say goodbye
to the fishing boats,
write lines of poems
with crying gulls and raindrops,
my lowly audience
in April’s guilt-free imaginings –
what couldn’t be better than this?
back against stone clock tower,
droop-faced worshipers
trudging from the temple –
I hold myself here
so there is no looking back,
there are only innumerable people,
fish smells, the docks,
old rough hands, tattooed arms,
so stark, so removed,
it’s like I’m in a
low low crowd on tip-toe —
rain sits humbly
on the back of my neck,
I don’t really mind
that this town is a sentence—
it’s how I shed my people,
moving on,
knowing no one,
and taking out a pad and paper –
I’m a veteran of gray clouds,
and the clock-work doings of others –
an old man strides down the rocky hill,
sings hoarse and wild –
he’s out of his head,
where he belongs,
I wear my gray mind
like a raincoat.

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.