{"id":13867,"date":"2012-05-29T06:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T18:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=13867"},"modified":"2012-05-28T21:30:24","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T09:30:24","slug":"tuesday-poem-push-by-david-gregory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/05\/29\/tuesday-poem-push-by-david-gregory\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Push” by David Gregory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Push<\/strong><\/p>\n

He has found the green door at last,
\nin a faded, jaded street.
\nAnd, slightly askew, it reflects
\nthe slant of his memories.<\/p>\n

Behind it, there might be a childhood,
\nif he could only reach the handle,
\nand against the glass
\n(the sunlight blood of stained glass roses)
\nthere is the shadow of his father.<\/p>\n

And the hallway builds back
\ninto those small rooms.
\nIn that one the faces turned
\nlike flowers to the sun of her entrance.<\/p>\n

That beautiful woman who spilt his love
\neasily as tea, and he only
\nthe second best china.<\/p>\n

But listen, there is his mother singing,
\nand a chorus of relatives rehearsing
\ntheir relatively small disagreements.<\/p>\n

He hears his grandmother calm the dog
\nbarking at the approach of a strange future.<\/p>\n

How much? He asks the scrap-yard dealer.
\nWell, the man says,
\nthese things don\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n

(c) David Gregory<\/p>\n

Published in “Push”<\/strong> (Black Doris Press) 2008<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

About the Poem: The Poet’s Note<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“Doors feature on the covers of all three of my collections of poetry. In using them as a motif I have also posed two questions to myself; why are they important to me and will there be a resonance for the reader? In choosing the poem from which the title of my recent collection, \u201cPush\u201d is drawn, this questioning is continued. I draw back from \u201cexplaining\u201d the poem; the meaning for the reader is not necessarily the meaning for the writer. It is a delight to me when someone has drawn different inferences from the words which then revalidate the work.<\/p>\n

Readers over a certain age may recall the ancient pop song \u201cGreen Door\u201d where a line goes, \u201cI don\u2019t know what they got but they sure play it hot behind the Green Door\u201d. The door constitutes a physical and metaphysical separation from something both desired and unknown. The song, and the poem also resound with the idea of the \u201dsearch\u201d, where one moves forward in life, often with an increasing baggage of memory, and where the recognition of an physical element (the door) is also the recognition of a pivotal point in that life. That pivotal point may lie in the past, but can condition one\u2019s attitude to the present. It is possible to be unaware of this pivotal point until a flash of recognition illuminates it. In this case, that point has become a thing that is pivotal in itself; that both conceals and reveals, allows and bars experience, includes and excludes, and, as the poem says, these things don\u2019t come cheap. And have I answered my own question?”<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

About the Poet:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>David Gregory<\/strong> is a Christchurch based poet active in the promotion of New Zealand writing. He is an editor for Sudden Valley Press and a member of the Canterbury Poets Collective and has three books of poetry to his name\u00a0, “Always Arriving”<\/strong> and “Frame of Mind”<\/strong>, both by Sudden Valley Press, and “Push”<\/strong> by Black Doris Press\u00a0. His work has been published and performed locally and internationally.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon<\/strong> in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Push He has found the green door at last, in a faded, jaded street. And, slightly askew, it reflects the slant of his memories. Behind it, there might be a childhood, if he could only reach the handle, and against the glass (the sunlight blood of stained glass roses) there is the shadow of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13867"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13877,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions\/13877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}