Is it in the pattern of things
when the body is seated too long
that there's no way to stand?
This is not a sudden realisation.
I was talking to a friend about night
driving taxis, bad muscles, bad lyrics
in a pub band's crawl through material.
It's not even part of the pattern
even as I look at my hand.
Its lines are no more mysterious
than treasure and maps.
They are material and get used.
The arm swings, a pen runs out of itself
and a poem seems spidery.
Thin or sticky - weigh the metaphors
self telling self, though my fingers
tire at the root and the mass of leaves
over there, above the steel lines
they turn not quite like my palm
the light silvery, in flashes, sublimations.
Now I think of hunger
and of time on the watch bending again.
Jill Jones
Sydney 1.50pm, Wed 19 October 2005
|