Luke Grecki: Poems

Light of Night

2026-10-16T00:00:00Z

When night comes like lightning
I watch until it pools like rain.

I listen while it flows in the cracks,
filtering through the soil
and seeping into bedrock.

I let it climb like ivy
up the bark of old trees,
the night flora feeding
on a growing silence.

The canopy closes.

The soil alive with insects
that harvest dead tigers.

There is no hand to hold
as you feel your footing on this island,
no compass that can discern north
in the darkness.

Crying that you were far
I held to you in that cave,
my voice foreign to my ears.

My library of dreams becoming
a ruin in my old hands.

This strange fever
of night and day,
the hollow sound of clocks
as I try to stay awake.

II.

Watch the darkness move.

Thoughts as far away
as birds that sail in the midnight sky.
I watch each known thing
become strange again.

I see your face,
your eyes in this wild country.

Illuminated by fire,
a portrait that moves like a river
hidden by great trees.

Drunk with pain you tied knots in the dark,
trying to hold earth.
Your fist opens like a flower,
the world ten thousand miles away.

Our months disappear into seasons,
wood worn down by our leaving.

To repeat ourselves
is our curse and our joy,
to grow wheat again
where wheat has died.

Can you feel the wet earth,
can you feel the grass growing
under our soft feet?

You are no one

2026-10-16T00:00:00Z

My eyes dart from yours.
When we speak our words tumble
into birds.
A warmth follows me walking at night alone,
in foreign countries you have memorized bridges
and the worn hands of guards.

I spoke softly of barbed wire
and hats, and the torn faces under awnings.
As I hold your torch
I hear my cry breathe,
I find you at the bottom of stairs
I have fallen down in my sleep.

You are standing on the edge of a grave.
I am the dead.

Unseen territory where armies dissolve
and flags become rags on homeless men.
I have turned away from voices thick with pain,
hands that have fried their last egg,
eyes that wrinkle like stars.

You are no one.
The heat of your silence
makes me squirm.
I laugh nervously.
I am not sure of trees,
or how my mother will get home.

I want to know the last thing you remember
at night,
the castles you see behind your eyelids.
The german shepherd you pet 52 years ago,
and the thousands of people whose faces
you have forgotten.

My grandfather fed wild animals in the war.
He sang and sobbed in his deep Russian voice.
All I have is one cassette tape.

Five sages meet in a clearing

2026-10-16T00:00:00Z

They sit in silence, gently,
like a cup filled to the brim
with water.

They speak slowly, carefully,
one at a time,
holding each other’s words
in a world that has forgotten how.

They talk of the nectar one finds
at the edge of the forest,
how mycelium quietly widens
underground,
where a crocus breaks soil
in spring.

They talk of people whose eyes trembled
as they spoke,
who looked on as if at green meadows
near the house they grew up in.

They talked of themselves, shaking
as they walked into unknown cities
where beggars looked on with hungry eyes.

At weddings they spoke of funerals,
offering spring flowers into the hands
of the beloved.

Dark clouds gathered above the clearing,
yet the sages were unmoved.
They talked of the rain soaking
their clothes, their cold limbs
calling for warmth.

They talked of their eyes going down
like the sun,
not knowing when they would meet again.

They sit in silence, bowing
toward each other.
In a season’s time the field
will be overgrown with flowering weeds.

Meeting the teacher

2026-10-16T00:00:00Z

My confusion falls flat
as it exits my mouth.
His questions live and pulse
toward an unseen center.

Where is your life?
Where is your practice?

I squint and laugh,
I feel like a child trying
to hold something too big
for his hands.

The room grows now
and drops into still water.
There are no problems,
there is just the light
from my old knots burning.

Heavy with gratitude,
I walk into the hallway.
Bowing toward the door
my confusion rises like grass.