The Night Before Your Return Poem by Jill Jones

The night is kind tonight,
the sky is purple,
clouds are orange,
and planes fly away
to the south.
I need no fan, a cricket sings.

And you are under heat in Brisbane.

The Turks do not sing,
one phone over the road softly rings,
and I have drunk pale green tea
from an old cup.
I have not done
what I ought to have done.
The window is open
as the mind at midnight,
cars fade away,
carriages rattle through timetables.

You are asleep and out of range.

Spiders work, their lines
arrange like poetry,
another train embraces
the lone traveller,
and there are always the dogs.
I am clean, naked and cool.

You are covered in distance
that you unwrap tomorrow,
driving down
over rivers, across valleys,
through hot towns, dry acres,
into the wet south of my dreams.