ALAN JEFFERIES

 

ALAN JEFFERIES

 

Only Spring

 

My first wife insisted

i should never have married

in the first place,

such was my fondness for solitude;

then, promptly unmarried me

 

My second wife had no such complaint -

but then, she too has left

for the land from which there is no return.

 

So my love of solitude

has been left to take root,

and grow unchecked;

it’s waist high on the verandah

and it’s only spring!

 

 

Our Life Awaits Us Somewhere

 

Our life awaits us somewhere,

just round the corner

a wardrobe full of neatly pressed shirts

a caravan pulled up on a verge,

a bicycle rusted to its chain.

Somewhere beyond all that

our life awaits

 

like a better version of ourselves

waiting to reappear;

See, I was never far away

I was always just here

hands folded on my lap

breath gently drawn in

 

I was always here,

just around the corner

waiting for you to reappear.

 

ALAN JEFFERIES

 

ALAN JEFFERIES is a poet and childrens' author born and raised in Brisbane. He started writing and publishing after moving to Sydney in 1976. Between 1998 and 2007 he lived and worked in Hong Kong where he co-founded (with Mani Rao and Kit Kelen) OutLoud, Hong Kong’s longest running English language poetry reading. He's published six books of poems, his most recent being a bi-lingual edition “Seem” (Flying Islands, 2010) (Chinese translation by Iris Fan Xing). He currently lives in Woolgoolga on the NSW mid-North Coast. A new book of poems, "in the same breath"  is forthcoming from Flying Islands in 2021.