Allison Grayhurst

Poet

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Three New Books: The Sparrow Wars; The Poetry of Allison Grayhurst - completed works from 2022 to 2025 (Volume 8); Every Tree That Burns - a collection of poems about loss, grief and renewal

. . . Book 40 The Sparrow Wars (2025, Edge Unlimited Publishing; ISBN: 9798298279604; ISBN: 9798277686737; ASIN: B0G5LK3CG9) Buy PDF of book: The Sparrow Wars This book, The Sparrow Wars, and all of its content are the copyright © of Allison Grayhurst 2025 (Front cover photo © by Allison Grayhurst. All sculptures and photos inside the book © by Allison Grayhurst)   You can purchase the book in…

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Open

Open             Soak the born in their own initial conception to remember the pure-memory-pockets, the truth of miracles.         Underline everything that matters and read it again until no small word is skimmed over or taken for granted.         Open the shelter doors and let all animals in, wild ones, broken ones, aggressive and tame. Free with a blessing every dream that isn’t false, and…

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Touch

Touch     The first touch was bitter, tantamount to an attack, deception from a vantage point of spiritual superiority.   The second touch was touching a tomb, still full of stench though the flesh had rotted long ago – just dry bones, barely a full form.   The third touch angered, like when a snake snatches a fledgling, angry at the innate brutality all around.   The fourth touch was perfect, a…

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Walk

Walk     Then the bitter defeat was burning like a sin committed, recognized and unforgiveable. Then on a hill, heavy with weighted down legs and an injury there, debilitating but unexplained, the challenge came to walk.   Walk slowly at first, walk like I can walk even though the reins are dropped and I have lost my mother, lost life’s victory over death and the comfort of an unbreakable love…

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Small Moon

Small Moon     A small moon melted fleshed out a sure-footed sacrifice but changed directions, too quickly into the direction of a red star. Then her heart was burned, crispy and crumbling, no more a perfect circle, drooping on one side, gravity became queen of her false crescendo song.   Hiding her deformity in the dark red burn, hoping no one could see her misshapened side, which she tended to…

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Talk

Talk     If I talk again, I will keep my end-mind twisted so it cannot speak or formulate a plan. I have no constitution for plans or wherewithal for achieving human-made provisions.   If I talk again, silence me into prayer, conversing only with the angelic order, strengthened by devotion and the power of obedience.   If I try to be a player, remind me of my meek capacity, sting me with regret…

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A Love Like No Other

A Love Like No Other     Your steady love has saved me, one more dark wave rising and you hold my hand, staying the course, sharing with me your glowing inspiration, giving me space to expose my gruesome wounds within. You do not flinch, or distract, but give me room to writhe and cry out and then you look at me, love in your eyes like God at my table, offering water, acceptance, and with that…

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Over

Over     Under siege like an anthill invaded upon by an anteater. Summer is tainted with humidity and boredom, intermingled with strong bouts of unholy despair.   I hear nothing when my hands are outstretched. I receive nothing in the hollow of the rock I am crushed inside of and asked there, inside of it, to be reborn.   Had I yearning once? Hope? Even prophecy? I don’t anymore. For…

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Surrendered

Surrendered     In the middle – steady, harsh waves, salty flavoured ocean, stranded, treading. Love comes smiling. It is a ghost. Joy comes and passes by. Purpose comes but floats by like a jellyfish riding the momentum.   In the middle, tired of treading, no escape, just the ebb and flow, surging, retreating waters. What lies beneath makes no difference because nothing is above except the…

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She

She     Fear is splendid in making the body inflamed, bloated on trepidation at the news of many meadows burning.   She hurried and found a healer inside herself, willing to go the distance and forfeit personal power for a greater acquisition. She understood the traveller and the sit-at-homer as one in the same, especially on a stormy day or a year of upheaval.   Faith is the bullseye with no…

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You were born

You were born     with the light of a nebula inside of you, natural as your loving smile tortured now by isolation and a waning strength that has your commitment maimed and muted. But underneath that light still surges, cannot be snuffed out or ignored.   You are blessed with invincible charm that takes up a room and soothes every broken soul. Do not let circumstances threaten your joy or hold…

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Ghost

Ghost     Gone, dripping down the drain after a cut. Gone, the sweet flavour lingering of maple syrup on the tongue. Gone like democracy from a land conquered by a tyrant. Gone like inspiration from the crushing overtones, undertones, all-tones of relentless grief. Gone like a love that was once unique as it was necessary, stretching her grace over my home, my family and my faith. Gone, and I…

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Molasses-dream

Molasses-dream     The fighting blood, and the power of broken bones mending. Flip the unknowing cause of famine and feed on faith like a summer’s feast of fruits and nuts accepted as a birthright. Change is incremental, even the change of death takes time to incorporate into the nervous system, slowly inching into reality, sometimes healing in its wake, always scarring.   Bedrooms are emptied,…

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Slowly the builder builds

Slowly the builder builds     but the miracle-maker is quick – enormous change, dreamt-of-no-longer. The end-result is a shock of grace and the depths of God’s power displayed, gifted for no deserving reason but love and the faith that the receiver has in that love, welcoming that love.   Mustard seed blooming in seconds, why look under the blankets or walk the steady path? Matter is a wave…

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Star

Star     I think if I was a trillion-year-old star blazing, always in deep transformation, pulling planets into my orbit and asteroids and the tips of angel-wings, bypassing, touching, fearless, as bright or brighter manoeuvring with unexpected harmony   then remembering would be easy – to see the past as a sealed perfection, no matter how apparently flawed, to see myself as the same   then I…

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Out

Out     I asked to be let out from that unwanted accomplishment. I asked to shed my shame, my duty and the hard-core call of doing time.   It was taken down and away from me, along with so much more. Guilt, and worldly bondage also fell along with security, along with a strange, twisted pride.   Knuckles down, hands still folded. In my head are ghosts of patterns dissolved but are still haunting.…

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Much Much and Many

Much Much and Many     I see what my eyes betray, but see the rising healing corridor shine and expand to set right the direction of the wind and the lack that keeps leaking until more lack insults all hope.   I see this home delivered, angels laughing in each corner and the floors and ceilings are rivers of abundance, crossing the barrier, dissolving barriers, trusting that truth will abide like…

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