Three Poems by George Murray

Turn of the Page

It feels like time is speeding
up the closer I come to my end
within it, but they say now
time is a book with only one
page in which the plot happens
all at once, every twist
on top of another, less a single
story told and more
a chorus of varied voices
meeting randomly at points
of harmony and discord
until our need for order sorts it
and starts to build enough sense
to follow, and the reason
everything feels as though it is
gaining a dangerous momentum
here at the turn of the page
is that I am finally getting closer
to understanding what story
I’ve been telling you all this time.

Two White Moths

This midsummer stock-stillness
knows its own form of chaos,
insects humming above
the path, hung in the thick air
on invisible lines. Among
the dusty grass tips now gone
to seed, two white moths,
identical to the untrained eye,
which is to say every eye not
their own, wave their tiny
surrenders, urgent semaphores
snapping in a wind so ghostly
they and they alone can feel
where it pulls. How one knows
another well enough
to continue the dance, much less
the species, goes over my head.
But this is how love should be,
and also how love is. Beyond me.

Firing Squad

German car, fame, thick wallet, curb-appeal house,
giant TV, enviable legs hung from a spouse;

all these poorly inherited ambitions
complete with their own tiny reductions.

It’s time to line up these desires against the bricks,
let last, unlit cigarettes dangle from their lips;

take aim at whichever one you resent the most,
and start firing until you get to the ghost.

George Murray is the author of six previous collections of poetry, two bestselling collections of
aphorisms, and one book for children. His tenth book, Problematica: New and Selected Poems, 1995–2020, was released in September 2021.