Confessions – Ali Jones

 

Now is the time to admit what I saw at midwinter.

The young oaks were leaning in around their mother,

while a gnarled old door opened the way in her trunk.

From inside, light was streaming and all the other trees,

raised and shook their branches as if praising something.

 

Now is the time to admit what I saw at midsummer.

The holly was rising tall as any cathedral, form shifting,

into a huge crowned figure, who stretched his limbs,

then set off on a progress around the whole forest.

All other trees knelt down and bowed their heads in respect.

 

Now is the time to admit what I don’t know about.

The birch sisters who whisper heroic couplets at the boundaries

baffle me. I cannot speak ash, or hornbeam or blackthorn.

All I know is that the trees go about their business,

they do important work, while I wonder and wait.

 

 

Alison Jones is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom. Her pamphlet, ‘Heartwood’ was published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, with a second pamphlet. ‘Omega’ forthcoming.

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December 22, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, birch, confession, creative, creativity, crown, door, family, forest, form, holly, knowledge, language, light, nature, oak, poem, Poetry, praise, seasons, shift, trees, writing Leave a comment

Metamorphosis – Ali Jones

 

Once I stood, a tall pine,

basking in sunlight.

Mare’s tail fronded my roots,

creatures thrived in my forest.

 

Time has many names.

 

When I fell, I swam, bog born.

I have been pressed,

like a rare flower caught

in a treasured volume.

Life put weight into me,

I married billion year old sunlight

and held it in my trunk.

 

Transformed to strata,

then exhumed and scuttled

into a sparked hearth,

I reach for the skies again.

 

 

Alison Jones is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom. Her pamphlet, ‘Heartwood’ was published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, with a second pamphlet. ‘Omega’ forthcoming.

November 24, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Ali Jones, change, creative, creativity, cycle, elements, fall, flower, life, names, nature, pine, poem, Poetry, roots, skies, sunlight, time, treasure, tree, weight, world, writing Leave a comment

Turn the Wheel – Ali Jones

 

He marks the year with stones,

feels the fire in trees rising,

 

when the sky calls up life.

He inhales beneath the horse chestnut,

 

stands in his father’s footprints,

eyeing the benign branch caught stars.

 

His mother leashes his hand,

they ride on wind dogs and go hunting

 

for the best kindling, where hills

are clouded with sheep.

 

In autumn, leaves throned gold,

he pockets treasures, and watches

 

the flames recede in the fall of red and yellow,

dry wood transformed in age.

 

He mounts an iron horse,

flesh consumed with the spirit of speed,

 

the season carries his skeleton to cage

a man’s soul, while roots travel

 

down, sinking with winter’s life,

to condense into vital coal.

 

 

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

February 25, 2018February 25, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, animals, colours, creative, creativity, elements, family, fauna, flames, flesh, life, nature, poem, Poetry, roots, sky, soul, stars, treasure, wind, wood, world, writing Leave a comment

Traveller – Ali Jones

 

He arrived, a long washed sailor,

over the rolling sea, making home

because he likes what he sees;

the waist nipped flouncers in sky

high heels, he brings them sunshine,

 

in the grey northern streets, freestyles

beats, wears flip flops with no thought

for others. He wants to fit in though,

with winkle-pickers and pool cue crowds,

not with grim suited pen-pushers.

 

Under his feet, colours splatter the pavement,

smiles spread silently across his face,

he hears old ladies whisper, scandalised,

then turn silently away;

he wears the world well.

 

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

February 11, 2018February 11, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, arrival, colours, creative, creativity, elements, face, feet, home, nature, poem, Poetry, sailor, sea, silence, sky, smiles, streets, sunshine, travel, whisper, world, writing Leave a comment

Stairfoot – Ali Jones

 

They enter dark waters in fire damps,

waiting in the amniotic dusk,

below the surface, while the mouth

breathes fire to the sky.

 

Softly, they flow downwards,

grow back into the mineral landscape,

tossed back up to the light when

the earth sees fit. Some were found in shards

where the water world dammed

and womb fluid filled the streets.

 

Maybe they are fish now,

transforming all together

into a great shoal, the older men leading,

the boys drifting, tentative, into

bodily definition, coal, ironstone,

fireclay, ganister, shale and sandstone;

 

all become them. Separated from life,

in wonders and challenges, they enter again,

transfigured by fire and waves,

and they shall be here in many wonderful shapes,

the grain of wheat, the running hare,

leaping alive at the harvest, or turned back in again.

 

 

(Historical note: The Oaks Colliery explosion is the second deadliest coal mine disaster in the United Kingdom after the disaster at Senghenydd Colliery. There were two more explosions on 13 December 1866, which killed 27 rescue workers. The Oaks Colliery, one of the largest coal mines in England, experienced 17 further explosions until it ceased operations in the 1960s.)

 

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

January 31, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, darkness, death, disaster, dusk, earth, elements, explosion, fire, fish, humanity, life, light, loss, memory, nature, Oaks Colliery, poem, Poetry, sky, Stairfoot, water, world Leave a comment

After Dark – Ali Jones

 

I wake at 3:15am, weight shifting towards her,

did she hear the rain? I listen to her snared cry,

try to understand the rhythm of dreams,

what happens behind her eyes, as we travel back

into our room, hazy in gathered night,

shadowed gloom making everything strange,

 

I rearrange us, fuss up pillows, billow bedding

to hold us tight until morning light comes.

Other people stir, the breathing agents of sound

too loud for easy rest. She settles, eyelids flutter,

 

I lie awake, stilled by rallying whispers of breathing,

marvel at the differences of our waking world,

how we stand at ease and claim our places,

and how deeply we commit to sleep,

 

though we fight it, nightly, reading story after story,

playing as late as we dare. The day is wrung from us

in fits and starts, sung through open lips,

teasing the snagging air, a stored syntax

 

of waking tongues, that have begun to find the sounds

they need to make, and try them in the wee small hours,

before daytime takes us away into another realm,

to refashion us into sometime else, and make us whole again.

 

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

September 1, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, Ali Jones, change, creative, creativity, cry, dreams, elements, fight, humanity, life, light, night, poem, Poetry, rain, senses, sleep, sound, time, waking, world, writing Leave a comment

Cityscape – Ali Jones

 

In concrete jungles, he dreams concrete trees,

to knock at his window in perfect cadences,

 

as night lowers the sky and curtains run their tracks.

He sees seeds lifted in the air, blown high

 

to ride with clouds, on moth wings and

twilight whispers. The trees have seen him,

 

they know where he sleeps, watch them lean in

and put their heads together, to show him

 

imagination and free thinking, without and within,

in grey skies, under a metal moon, a triumph of green.

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, city, clouds, colours, concrete, creativity, dreams, imagination, jungles, metal, moon, nature, night, poem, Poetry, sky, sleep, trees, twilight, urban, whispers, wings, writing Leave a comment

Favourite – Ali Jones

 

I always choose yellow, because it excites me,

but not when it ripens into a bruise,

the brightening of the sky so enticing,

the bleeding below the surface of a limb not so.

 

I have seen the ochre tinged stirrings

of a curried cauldron, a mother’s cooking.

a shock on white china, and amber stare,

telescoped from another continent,

 

and the strands, so valuable, pressed

in a golden red O, so beautiful behind plastic,

a stained glass window breathing like

a monument, waiting to be opened.

 

Flower centred, the blessing of yellow,

a promise circled to contain, yolked,

I have seen life visible, an artefact

of light, on a river’s mirrored edge.

 

 

Ali Jones is a teacher and mother of three. Her work has appeared in Fire, Poetry Rivals, Strange Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin Poetry, Atrium, Mother’s Milk Books, Breastfeeding Matters, Breastfeeding Today and Green Parent magazine. She has also written for The Guardian.

August 4, 2017August 5, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ali Jones, bleeding, blessing, body, colour, creative, creativity, elements, family, flower, glass, humanity, life, light, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, shock, sky, window, writing, yellow Leave a comment