Jeff P. Jones

Seasons of Memory

with all apologies to Mr. Kinnell

Autumn

Into frost’s
harrowed rows—
frozen earth, where plows
have passed these many years,
coaxing winter wheat to rise,
the earthbound toil for bread—

I wander,
into broken furrows,
dark rows, and for you,
whose fate
I will give into the hands
of others, abandoned to unknown whims,

I ceiling
the stars and watch my breath.

In the rising
mist, moist droplets in anxious
dispersion, I can see the dead
satellites, naked, battered
by the universe, longing for release,
I can hear the splintering
of ice-bound planets
breaking under my weight.

The veiling cloud
expires and is gone:
the pinpoint stars, spiraled planets
begin their dead-cold light
again: the spirit ceased,
the hoped-for spirit between earth
and sky, ceased, to be asked for again
and again, with every breath.

Winter

I hum
a winter tune hummed to me
at my crib—
Although the snow
Covers the hope of spring—

while in the darkness
a coyote passes the kennel
of a fox. Skirting row to row,
he sniffs the pheasant tracks;
trotting outside of time,
his paw-prints tell a history of seeking
to the earth behind,
which is the last trace to others
of his path.

The thing
inside me grows
like yeasted bread
rising in warmth,
consuming space meant for life,
blacking out the lights
within, bringing on
departure.

The warm wind fades
out of the words, the last sound
remains—a question aloud,
growled at the coyote
slipping off into the dark.

Spring

In the black soil
the planted seeds await, spiraled
points of certitude,
the frost thawing from around
their work rising
like softened spirits
born again to the clouds of spring.

Her head
will feel the pinch
which opens the world: two knees,
distant yet familiar, to guide
disembodied efforts
as she is pressed, willing, unwilling,
toward the shudder
of separation.

When spring comes
along the edge of the field
on a thawing day, the earth flows
down the hill like lava, bursting over
the cusp of snow. A twisting, intertwined
stream, the runnels flow and overlap
in the most natural architecture.

Summer

I did not know,
and yet memory keeps
in locked chambers a humming
shadow in the nighttime—
Someday we'll meet again, my love,
Someday whenever the spring breaks through

a longing
that persists when the white nights
creep up, this ever-hungry beast
demanding to be fed.

When the swollen
city swells, spoiling this field
of toilsome bread, when the seasons
of memory open,
and the coyote tiptoes
through your crib dreams,
that’s me
wandering through the diminishing
field, dimmer stars above,
feeling the thrill
of solitude.

And in the days
of abandonment,
when you sense
the lack of a thing not yet known,
I pray there will come to you
an image,
misted, rising as
steam
into your room,
and you
who sing and reach
toward dreams
will stretch toward the vapor
clinging to the air
above
and pull from it
our song.

 

 

Return to Volume 1.1

 

 

 

 
 

 

All files © 2005-2012 Blood Orange Review