Poetry by Sian M. Jones

      Jim Choate CC




All Attention All the Time

It's hard for me talk 
in fewer syllables.
There's always been 
the water-rushing power
of more. Even mathematics 
are too orderly, too succinct.
I need the fertile overgrowth
of sentences. And as I'm writing,
I'm always behind the clock, 
racing like the lead horse, 
so far ahead of the others
that you could take photos
of my feet clean off the ground
most of the time. I'm not saying this to brag.
This pace makes me unstable, always mid-fall.
And there's rot if you bring in
too much harvest in a single season.
It all just lies around, 
moldering in unsorted piles. 
But maybe I am hoping that 
rot becomes fermentation, 
a richness in the gut.
If not, what is the point of me,
this uncontrolled excess?
All this energy unspooling:
only disturbance, never rest.





​These After-effects

What do I do 
with this information
on an average day?
That someone I love has died.
I carry it with me from room to room, 
teetering, unwieldy in my hands.
Where can I put it down?

It lingers like something important
I can't remember -- 
why I came in here,
what it is I want 
when I'm not 
wanting to undo death.

Or maybe it's like the thunderstorm 
I missed this afternoon
inside this cocoon apartment.
My husband texts me to say 
how many inches fell
in that very short time,
but all I see now is 
steam coming up 
from a thin skin of water
on the summertime pavement.

Hard to breathe as
that physical presence 
erases.

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The Murmuration

On our errands around the valley,
my 87-year-old mother and I are sitting
in a left-turn lane that will not turn. 
I'm in the driver's seat, frustrated.
The protected light has not shone
in a couple of rounds now, 
so the oncoming traffic has won again.

Or has it? Because while we're there, waiting,
a murmuration of starlings gathers power.

Starting like the tendril spout of a tornado
not yet anchored to the ground,
then collecting, condensing
into a thick and fantastic spiral,
around and around, barely missing
the roofs and walls of the strip mall
buildings they dive through.
They start as a shadow
then swirl into a stream,
a river of coordinated bodies,
pouring sideways and crossways and up
in an increasing rush 
like our breath
in our bodies
as we watch.

Then all at once, 
the flock peels off to the east, 
exporting their aerial art
to some other intersection.

Impending, impending, 
arriving in glory,
then departing too soon.

Like this end of life 
my mother is living,
and I'm living with her.
Too soon.

​


Sian M. Jones received an MFA in fiction from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Passionfruit Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection, among other publications. In her day job, she writes as clearly as she can about complex code. She occasionally updates jonessian.com.
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