Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three times nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, she has over 850 poems published in over 380 international journals. She has twelve published books of poetry, seven collections, nine chapbooks, and a chapbook pending publication. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com

Cracked
 
Cracked to retrieve
the soft part inside,
the nutritious overflow
that rests open with
a broken shell and will
never regain its symmetry
or means of protection.
Cracked in the nearing Autumn,
fresh as the false dream
has been exposed,
 
and you realize
that anything true bends
its will to the moment,
relinquishing its authority
to a higher unknown agenda.
Sighs, sings and takes notes
under siege of the shifting
winds, underwater, happy
if it is able to rise
and sometimes float.
_________________________

Harmony
 
If I make it into the warmth,
vibrant as a crushed flower, catch
when the sidewalk children
throw a ball, rake leaves
with my hands and scrapbook
the best of them,
then this shell could own its sensitivity,
and not just the underbelly, then the
painted road arrows will point
like divinations for the white butterfly and I
to follow – expectations, destinations shed
for a fullness of joy,
coral-coloured angles pursued –
outside our bodies, in sync
inside our bodies, aligned.
_________________________

Unstuck
 
Of course it happened
this way – the bed was bought,
the sheets were new, and the fist
bore down like a fireball, blazing
comfort into smoke and then extinction.
Of course the memory lasted
decades, even lifetimes, bulging up through
a normal ecstasy, distorting a regular
hope of moving onward, until all passages were
claimed by that disaster and all offspring were lined
with its inevitable outcome.
 
Of course I never took the haunting as a gift or
a train ride through a desert, though I know that a bonfire
is not the same as that bomb, and my initials have changed since
that day, as have the ramifications of such violent chaos.
I love beyond the library of other people’s stories,
 
I am not deceived by morsels of paradise promising
a meal or a fridge full of many meals.
Of course it will always hurt and memory remains
a mule on a slow decline, but peace is a whistle
beckoning me into its spell. The hurricane
has lifted and I watch children gather,
forming a community much stronger
than a one-off home.