I wish poetry came to me
As easily as a fish to water.
I wish poetry came to me
When I was happy
Instead of when I'm sad.

But I'm not a fish,
And poetry is not water.
But I'm not happy.

So I pick a pen and grab a sheet,
And try to write
Beneath the stars and the sky.

And I write and write about your eyes.

And as I finish these lines,
I realise even thought it did not come
As easy as a fish to water,
I am happy.

And at the end of the day that is all that matters.

In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023

Some things are too whole
to be spoken.

A look.
A breath that almost turned into speech.
The way your shoulder moved
  before the apology
  that never arrived.

We speak so much
  just to hide
  what we actually feel.

But the unsaid -
 it sits quietly
 in the space behind your teeth,
 in the silence between names.

It doesn’t fade.
It settles.

I remember the pause
 more than the sentence.
The moment before
 you almost said
    “don’t go.”

But didn’t.

And that
  has echoed longer
    than any goodbye.

What we don’t say
 doesn’t disappear.
It becomes
 the resonance
    beneath everything we do.

(for him - and for her, because she knew)

he sat beside the window
as if touching the curtain
might undo
the schedule of departures

he spoke (gently?)
of energy
& the cosmos
of souls that keep circling
unless you tell them to stop.

sometimes (i thought)
he believed in stars
more than in us

the ones who loved him
knew
he wasn’t easy
and so did the others

she...
she never tried to save him
she just placed bread
on the table
and said nothing
when it burned

there was no fear
in her eyes
not even of his fear

she laughed
like someone who knew
truth doesn’t live
inside words
but inside
who stays
when words don’t

he was never strong
but he rehearsed it
so well
they believed him
even
as he began
to flicker

now he talks about dying
like someone
apologising
for being
human
after all

she would have told him:
“nothing real disappears.
it just returns
differently.”

but she didn’t say it
she let him
arrive there
alone

i don’t reply
i just
listen

and hold inside me
the words
he never wrote
(and maybe
never meant to)

not as son
not as disciple
but as someone
who didn’t run
when the ashes
finally
began
to speak