Jill Jones

Space is blue as morning
as noon, as evening
At midnight the dark forest parts for you

Our mouths are space
our craniums, wombs
the air tunnelling songs through our lungs

Space is where all space lives
it broods near its edges
darker and more vehement as it swells

Space has spoken, you can hear it
where you are, where you will be
There’s nothing more primary than here

Light lifts its corners
where space becomes space again
and all colour is stretching like a tree

Space is a window, a shining
a murmuring screen
green as heaven, blue as the underworld

Lift your grassy tongue into the dark
hear how your feet walk through each space
how blue they become

after Space, Dušan Marek

Jill Jones was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. She has been an academic for a number of years, but has also worked as an arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.