GETTING OVER A SICKNESS
A week into the recovery,
I found myself on solid ground.
I was back to language and history
familiar to me.
Sick, I had lived unquestioning,
finding my role as another mattress spring,
a soft down pillow, a sheet.
I was an animal absorbed by pain,
couldn’t get beyond the fact of living.
But now my journey arrived at the subtleties,
the secrets, the honesty, the cover-ups.
With no bed-ridden days between,
the present rejoined the past.
I was amidst a garden of plots and betrayals,
music and drone.
It was still a strange country,
a frightening, comforting newness.
The currency was motive.
I traded in what dreams imagine
for what dawn knows best.
John Grey is an Australian born poet, and a US resident since the late seventies. He works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Slant, Briar Cliff Review and Albatross with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and REAL.
