Spray and shadow
To take one step down, two, dodging
fresh magpie guano, morning
pleasantries, the plastic lines, cracks
along paths and bowls, leaves
the horizon shudders, where toons
play TV roll, poetry booms machinelike
wheels, voom-doof-tish, chunks
dies out along the road above
the dog’s heartache, no need to translate
the loneliness and the cropped, grunge shine
close lily, photographic, all the above, blue
this all moving us, two step, down.
Water’s dark shadows, and shiny
cold on toes, and hands me fresh
the nozzle screw, this sometime
boy-thing spray and spill all
make things rise, splash glint bugs
and dams die down, but what about
this green thing here, I feel beyond
latin names, all us suburban
species, collapse sometimes, we and are
more than bones and chlorophyll, that we
shudder in the wind and full
of water, this we drink as if mouths.
The fence, the orange grit, time
runs across all surface, within
also, how far dug and splintered
the instances sometimes drag, alive
I suppose, and spring, if we were talking
of it, is appearance, rush
flagrant green exotic glories
the only emptiness. Something I feel
nowhere is, words are sound or
they are painted on labels, touch
it all, not the same, skin feels different
every raised up counted time.
Even if above passengers flight
through sun haze, we call down
here, no ground our ground
just passing, light and rust, the touch
of our hands, yours knowing
but what do we mean by fertile, bent
on appealing to earth, bring forth
what will, and die, each time
rasping, skin close, that suggests
we are the women or leaf of dreams
as a dark wing, its bones closing
lands on a branch, rocking kiss.
Who’s made again this air, if not
the past garden, the mistakes
land pressure and browned seasons
our frail litters and spectral green veins
filled and filtered the sweet and
crushed tang, oil falls out of us
the flood we fritter or fret with
spatters the brick each day
bruises and fair filigreed buds of
branching, or earth shit still sticky
that communion leads on
to where the flower opens.
How much later is the moon
to be reinterpreted, all our tides
bunched at rivers and scuttled points
wherein you find still, plastic
soldiers, frisbeed 80s vinyl
the earliest rap, the taste wind
skipping the reticulations, night dew
and scuttle, skin and leaf raise
hairs, I might not tongue the TV
litany blueing the eye across fences
hose dribbles, spent all that water
still it lifts, and skews silence.
Jill Jones, Wednesday 21 Sept 2005 4.45pm
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