8/16/10

Beautiful Stranger
By John Grey


You sit momentarily at the edge of the fountain.
A faint water spray,
an eager light, converge on you.
I aim desire like a camera.
What do I have?
Some tremulous snapshots
of what I cannot possess
or a slim French novel,
full of romantic invention,
that I can carry under my arm,
dip into any time?


Wind picks up,
resumes its quarrel
with the shuddering leaves.
You throw back your neck
and your face moves gently
to the center of the world.


I do not know
if beauty is taking shape or taking air
and whether my thoughts
return to base camp
with what I know of you
or merely more ignorance of myself.


Beauty, like the cardinal
crimson on the oak branch,
pushes me unwittingly
into some discreet contest with logic,
the eye unsure of what it sees,
a brain that hides behind
the watercolors of its language.


It hangs me out here,
acting out this rite of disbelief,
my jaw dropped,
my bones like falling flakes,
my heart a blessed fugitive from sense.


You walk quickly away
ignorant of my presence.
You don’t know I’m a poet
and I take you with me down the years.


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Australian born poet, US resident since late seventies. Works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Connecticut Review, Alimentum and Writer’s Bloc with work upcoming in Pennsylvania English, Prism International and the Great American Poetry Show.