Poem With a High Wind Blowing Over It From the East

By | 15 September 2022
It blows leaves around

like letters –

forms shapes to-

gether


in highs and lows

I can’t read

I’m distracted

scatter and branch


by voices a cloud

that’s now dis-

appearing


We need clouds –


I watch kids bowl

at the nets

serious / accurate

‘line and length’ –


A small dog sniffs me –

feet to knees –

I think I pass


At the corner I dodge

a yellow tripod –

‘it’s a boundary

survey’ says the guy

levelling a theodolite


‘Aim the crosshair

in the viewing scope

at the point

to be measured’


Boundaries linger

even if fences fall –

I’ll be trespassing soon

with or without strong measure


The east wind is hot

and doesn’t care

kisses me as it passes

and yes I let it 


– again and again


I will not be forgiven, I will not repent
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Jill Jones was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Her latest book is Acrobat Music: New and Selected Poems, published in 2023. Other recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award and the 2022 John Bray Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. Her work is widely published in Australia and internationally and has been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, Czech, Macedonian and Spanish. She currently writes and teaches freelance, and previously has worked as an academic, arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.

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