John Jones

 

Love affair

                                there is
    glass in the window
           clean enough
                to see
      the white
     grey sky

4 panes
segment
the branches
of an outside tree

it is the end of autumn

the same tree
the same
                the same
               white grey
                       fluid

                    it is
another autumn
the outside tree
still quartered
remains

a complicated shape

 

Sedimentary

 (some indication of language from 5,500 BC)              fossil footprints found on the Gwent levels



Mesolithic marks
                that once
       were muddy traces
                       now revealed
by the storms tongue

how
three
crossed
these flats
their footfalls
felt like fingers
                 floundering
                             for fish

one man
his imprint
deeper on the left
carries something long
forgotten
         his son
my son’s age
scampers through
the edge of a wetland
the same but unlike ours
                                                  and sometime
in this distant passing
they stopped
to sound
to gather
in footprints
some words
that must have been
much greater than a grunt

we find
there’s something here
of language
that’s borne
by wind
by tide
by some chance to live
perhaps to die

       a little
a w a y
from town
tacked out
for the rock
or the hard place
I sometimes cross like souls
and talk

most
leave words
imprinted on my mind
               in town it’s different

in town
we have
advanced
to the dark age

a composite tongue
distilled from celluloid
where any conversation
seems minute

too shallow to sip liquid
from a gathering of small rain

 



branches
greening
bear
the dead
leaves
still
to fall
as moving
others
give
dry sound
the day
sharp
hill tops
plain
unspoken
the horse
in thin air
shines
here the end
life
a ridge
the tree line
the very act
of looking down



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