I CAME FROM the lagoon looking for air.
I had no companions.
I learnt to read by the wayside
who follows the hours with days.
The names of the gods are in the clouds
and on each numberplate.
I’m counting on you wherever you may be.
Twigs make their letters. What’s become
of the story lost into mangroves and tides?
Lists extend from scraps
and packages waterlogged with the moon.
The car tyre is without companions.
The lake sings a little. My consonants drown.
Nothing happens because of you.
Here’s a track and some old crime tape.
The highway is over the hill
where the harriers drift. Wings in relation to air.
Air by the wayside, in the trees.
Watery watery air.
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.
