TO WOMEN AT WINDOWS

Your man is on a beach somewhere
counting the waves,
amazed at how high the foam gets.
He doesn't notice the rocks,
the way the roughest sea
gets those old gray boulders in its gun sites.
And no shrill gull cry for him either,
just the smooth skim of its hunger.

Your man's not around to apply the bandages,
to loosen the blouse.
That's him collecting shells
without a thought that they're dead houses.
He finds an old bottle,
rubs it for its purple mist of a genie
though it's your back that's dying for massage,
your three wishes that zoom
in and out of traffic in the street below.

Your man's watching the last of the stars at dawn,
kicks down a sand-castle like it's a memory
getting in his way.
And the tide that buries footprints
is a boon his toes embrace.
You tell yourself that
if your life cannot get over
then it will just have to endure.
You lean out the windows of the heart.
He combs the shoreline of the nerve.

John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, The Pinch,  South Carolina Review and The Pedestal. with work upcoming in Poetry East and Big Muddy.

SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE : issue #008