In the Days Before they Came
What interests me so much more than
those pages of scripture foxed with turning
is his choosing of a blue gown over a white;
his weighing of two stones in either hand,
the one mottled like a perfect moon, the other
pale and blind as a sleeper’s face,
and his standing by an open window
speculating the limitless sea
as a merciful place where to rest his head
against a turning back towards a roiling world
whose tide is in the flood.
Dick Jones: Work has been published over the years in a number of magazines, print and online. Dick Jones; first collection Ancient Lights is published by Phoenicia Publishing. His translation of Blaise Cendrars’ influential epic poem La Prose du Transsiberien … was published in an illustrated collaborative edition with artist Natalie D’Arbeloff by Old Stile Press in 2014.