The Risks

It’s a risky business.
Otherwise, why are there roads.
And a weapon in every second household.
And weather channels.
And books on the downside
of the human anatomy.
Yet, here I go again,
waking up in the morning,
preparing myself for another day
of life – that flesh and blood target.
The traffic’s heavy
and on the lookout for the unwary.
No doubt, somewhere, someone
is cleaning a rifle
he doesn’t know is loaded.
A hurricane’s working itself into a lather.
And that pain in my shoulder
is more serious than I think.
But what else can I do
but put myself in the firing line.
Life is a balance
between what can hurt you
and what is taking it so long.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Muse, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and the Dunes Review.

Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek.