Colin F. Jones

IMAGERY AND REALITY

What is more fleeting than the written word;
Perhaps a petal from a flower torn;
Perhaps a flame living death absurd,
Or just a day counterfeiting morn.
When I did write those verses of my sorrow,
When my young life suffered so much woe,
I did not from another’s problems borrow,
Nor did I to another those lines show.
A thousand verses wept from my blunt pen,
And traced a life of loneliness and pain,
Words in the quicksand of a droughted fen,
Words that will not another pamphlet stain.
And thus I hope, one more wasted time,
You’ll at my table for a moment dine.

When I do read the verses of my rhymes,
I am perplexed by words that are just words,
Describing thoughts of many different kinds,
Like flying kites instead of studying birds.
Life’s truth seems poised at the distant poles,
Morn and night is mocked by spring and fall,
Cows have calves and horses they have foals,
Rocks and stones well they have naught at all.
The sun doth always shine it never fades,
There is no night just darkness without light,
‘Tis as a lamp which from a bough cascades,
But does not reach those lurking out of sight.
‘Tis all just thought – imagery and waste,
That I in this fool’s bowl I sit and taste.

Beyond my window the river it is dry,
It’s flowed for years from the coastal hills,
From where the Wedge Tail Eagle flies,
And cascades silver from the cliff top spills.
It winds inland from the Bonville heights,
Meanders westward through Coramba town,
Slithers through the Camphors and delights,
In rippling o’er the shallows southern bound
It cringes now from Nana Glens cruel pumps,
That suck the silver from its muddy green,
Exposing all its gravel and old stumps,
A more depressing sight I’ve never seen.
Through Glenreagh, its deeper reaches dry,
And I, a tiny pebble, with it die.