O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
John Grey
CARD TABLE
A card table,
unfulfilled,
does everything but talk
or do the puzzles in the newspaper.
No more games,
needs something else to do,
or it’s just a relic
of long-ago Friday nights
of poker, cigarettes and beer.
A sideline,
acting maybe,
King Lear,
all grief, all hardship,
all the time.
She says,
“It has to go.”
It’s not part of her heart
the way it is for him.
But maybe
she’s right.
Why keep
what can only be seen
in retrospect?
A card table,
left out for trash pickup,
winds blow,
fires rage,
thunder shakes,
thunderbolt strikes,
singes its green felt.
‘Tis foul.
About the writer:
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. John Grey has more work forthcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories, and River and South.
Image: Queen of Diamonds by Olga Rozanova (1886-1918). Oil on canvas. 33 x 27.1 inches. 1915. Public domain.
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