Poetry
Intervention
John Grey
I need to go back fifteen years
and half-way across the continent
to snatch the keys from your hand
just as you’re about to leave the bar.
I can be your guiding angel
or just a thief with a liking for your car,
or a stranger who grabs them accidentally,
or the guy you’re with who says,
“Why don’t you let me drive.”
There’s nothing to be gained
by me being in the here and now
while you need intervention,
divine or otherwise,
in a small town in Nebraska,
on a Saturday night in 2005,
as you totter out the door,
stumble across the parking lot.
“How’s it been,” you say,
as you look up at me
from your wheelchair.
“Sorry,” I reply.
“I really shouldn’t be here.”
and half-way across the continent
to snatch the keys from your hand
just as you’re about to leave the bar.
I can be your guiding angel
or just a thief with a liking for your car,
or a stranger who grabs them accidentally,
or the guy you’re with who says,
“Why don’t you let me drive.”
There’s nothing to be gained
by me being in the here and now
while you need intervention,
divine or otherwise,
in a small town in Nebraska,
on a Saturday night in 2005,
as you totter out the door,
stumble across the parking lot.
“How’s it been,” you say,
as you look up at me
from your wheelchair.
“Sorry,” I reply.
“I really shouldn’t be here.”
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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly..
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