Harold Jones
For Love Nor Money
“Every object, rests on its certain devaluation/In the implacable fact of an ending—decay,/Dissolution, death—from which another/New thing and its solicitation emerges.”
Bird Life: A Triptych
“No thought, as that of mine, to complete the bare/Purpose of their being, which is to feed and breed,/Become another edible, leave another seed.”
The Lie of the Land
Traffic
“And where, but in constant circularity/Is all this moving headed?/The answer Cannot be death…”
The Tide
“‘Where now security, what to trust?’/The cycle of an invisible moon has/Our harbor in its force, another period/Has begun: the existing limits to be tested.”
Love Makings
“Yet there is no one thing, no attribute/Of yours that I can fix on, nothing/I can abstract, describe, isolate…”
Five Poems of Neighborhood
“‘What have you got there?’ ‘It’s snapper.’/“Did you catch it?’ ‘No, my dad caught it—/He says to watch out for any tiny bones.’”
4 x 9
“Anyone who keeps/A compost heap knows the whole of life”
Fly Fishing
Oncology
“More truths than cancer creep beneath our speech.”
The River Walk
1 We enter at a loose, lichened gate— Wet to touch—that pushes open Over a shallow pool of rainwater, giving Out onto a thin, muddy trail Trod falteringly through lanky grass. Many others must enter here, But on our walk, we’re on our own. Behind, the rusted metal