This material spirit

Jill Jones

He made this lying down: reaching up

with close and distance in the origin

bird flame, salamander sun

amoeba and embryo, the artist’s circle

and begins.

As helpless and astounding life begins

with the cell, its own chaos acres.

Then question, the snake, marks a wall

approaches writing through womb, tentacle

sperm and flume we come from

this matter whose arrow of love can’t be predicted.

Earth bubbles escape into whale call

the fish’s tear, where it’s all going, mouth helix

to a child’s handprint, a tongue (red)

into wormholes, universes, sacs

of blue birth passage.

Perhaps sea felt like this as colours

crawled out and made ochres in the sun.

Within water’s eye is release, tasting

the first connection of salt in motion

and one-ness, then the sun’s line, letting it run

as fast as it can flow.

Trails mix trails evolving a dark script

so many stories in high-red waters, winding

seas whose issue bursts on topographies

lines and loops of existence, the way

numbers form then become invisible.

Tangent suns and filaments merge

a fiery drama you might want to escape

whose threads of substance aren’t inevitable

whose parallels don’t hold forever.

Can we look at what is over here, or there?

DNA to infinity, dotted through coral stars.

Some crazy life is running with odd grimaces

and grins, hands in the air, a sting in the tail

as bloodskin feels the air with tongues

and questions are overwritten

to disappear, animal within animal.

Jill Jones (NSW) is a poet and writer who lives in Sydney. Her work has been widely published in most of the leading literary periodicals in Australia as well as in a number of print and online magazines in New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Britain and India.

Her latest book Broken/Open was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year in 2005 and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in 2006.

This material spirit was written by Jill Jones in response to John Olsen’s Life burst 1964 in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection.