Eve Jones

Poetry
by
Eve Jones

                                                           

Sleeping Giant

Off the coast of Ireland an island
sleeps in the shape of a man.

To the ones who first saw him,
from a cliff edge or boat rail,

he must have come out of the mist
like a newly fallen god,

a drowned giant, his body gone
over to forest, his hair tumbling

into wave-break, hands tucked,
circled by birds. An island,

but also a man, a recognizable god.
Why do we look for ourselves

everywhere, mapping distance
between the heart and the wild?

Just on the edge of perception something
thrashes, screams, becomes a bird

crossing your line of sight. Always,
this fluency: a world dangling within
 
a world, another unbearable place
to inhabit. Always, lines arranging

the shape as it rises. Grief: wind in
a white field, the hand's

slow opening. What is time
but loss and gain,

the runner stumbling into the ribbon?
I, too, have done it-

given love a skin, a pair of arms,
offered it a bed to burn in.

It is the consequence of despair,
of love's strange face, any wild thing:                                                  

we trace it down into something not new,
but known, something that sleeps.

                                                                                 

The Adulteress To Her Husband

Years later, I still see you
at the point of my departure.
Your arms fell,
your voice tore like lace.
I had left long before. Still,
you keep entering my dreams,
a distant bell rocking in its tower.
It surrounds me,
too blunt for longing.

Something in me wants you dead.
I could be the high-necked Victorian
pacing the garden,
the letter tucked in my ruffled black breast.
That way, I could be free.
But my hands stink of blood.

Call it what you will, love -
it was love.
When I buried it
it was half-alive.
 

                                                                                       

Naming The Roses

Mid-afternoon, and
everything presses down,
sun swelling massively,
a long bloom on the hours. Its tongue
licks our breath. I walk,
carrying my son, gypsy-haired and hipped
and slowly
through the grass of the yard.
The solstice has come, gone-
a tiny triumph of light.
We walk along the fence.
We move through each shadow,
creatures of the earth, naming each thing:
clouds long as the bones of fish,
silver-skinned leaves, berries
in red slips, tubes of squash pushing,
pushing the dirt.
Bees stamp in their soft houses.
The sun slides down its tongue.
I lift my son to the roses, saying rose,
pink rose, showing his hand,
the way music is guided into air,
suddenly, a name for what we love
just beyond us.

 

Perspective on Plato's Allegory: A Love Story

When they sat us down the fire
Was a cold light on our backs,
Our shadows cast up on the wall
Like obedient children.
We could not speak.
I watched your shadow watching me.
Your face was my face,
Your hand took mine
Into its small darkness.
Above us, objects wavered past-
Book, leaf, rock, an assembly of sunless truths.
What is this, what is this,
They asked,
And I told them what they wanted to hear.
In my mind, I saw a deer leaping, struck
By light into the shadowed parts of itself.
I saw myself carrying the sun in my arms.
I saw my fingers lifting into the darkness
Of your face.
Do you understand, they asked, what is real,
And a hot wet thing moved in my chest.
They said, we are not our own shadows,
Our own names.
But I had no use for their truths.
You were a dark room I entered feeling the walls.
I was too far inside you to see anymore.

 

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