This is tough & beautiful, Jill. I love how you’ve created such an intriguing ‘baffle’ with those chosen end-words, & then kept up to them so slyly & intently. So the lines sing, if the dry dry blues…
Doug
> On Mar 20, 2018, at 7:10 PM, Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> TIME WOULD CHOOSE
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> what is the magpie searching for next to the path
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> all this summer we’ve felt only dust
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> a tree has fallen, its sap taken by drought’s gravity
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> and there’s a mash of branches like a burst moon
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> I trace ancient blur in the floating night
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> those tiny points spilling from the galaxy’s breast
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> the creek is torpid and smells like a sour sea
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> the bushlands seem to crackle and splinter like bones
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> I can tell myself its natural that everything dies
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> but when is death a place or time you would choose
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> to lie down together with the soil and the stone
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> to give up the air and the song in your mouth
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> rather be with sky like that magpie and dreaming
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> rather be vagrant than something you’d own
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> [Note: the words ending each line of this poem are also words ending
> lines of various poems I've been reading this week on not dis-similar
> 'themes']
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> ________________________
> Jill Jones
> www.jilljones.com.au
>
> Latest book: Brink, Five Islands Press
> http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/brink-jill-jones
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>
Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
the way of what fell
the lies
like the petals
falling drop
delicately
Phyllis Webb
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