Larry Griffin

Peacock

Once down on Big Cabin Creek near my grandpa’s farm,
beyond the bridge, there forever rusting, their fatal scream,
for the Jumps have peafowls and cocks too with nothing to do
but just strut around and often call out their varying alarm,

so I become another you in the sound, still wound up like you,
or does it remain a feather lost in time, a great sweep of arm,
trying to take it all in, like the fantails of some bigger bird.
I too often think of me, but more often I desire now to go

where we do our best always to make all into a better word
between us, the scream of the peacock, how it can now unlock
delight between us in our decided minds, what we read in books,
sitting there staring over the words, remembering, how it looks,

the words upon the page, the memory in the mind, what heard
brings us back together into the herd of humans, what we know.

Larry Griffin has published nonfiction, short stories and  poems in regional, national and international journals, ezines and small magazines. His chapbooks of poetry include New Fires, The Blue Water Tower, Airspace, and The Jane Poems. Seventeen of his short stories appear in his collection, A Gathering of Samphire and Other Stories. Griffin holds the post of Professor of English in the School of Arts and Sciences at Salman bin Abdulaziz University in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia. His paintings can be found in private collections in Australia, China, Egypt, England, France, India, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.