Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/gray-crt-tv-on-brown-wooden-tv-rack-KKCYmdyWaPU) 04.11.2023.
FOR THE LIFE OF ME
Last night,
I spent time in my parlor
in the company of dead people.
There was no conversation.
They could neither speak nor hear.
And, with their eye sockets blank,
they had no way to read my lips.
But I was relaxed.
And they seemed the same.
At least, so much more
than the forced-grin beings
of the family photographs.
They asked nothing of me
and I wanted nothing from then.
I sat back
in the comfortable over-stuffed chair,
They relaxed, side by side, on the couch.
Yet, after a time,
I could no longer bear the separation.
So they slipped back inside me
and we watched some TV.
About the Author: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.
