Jill Jones
Schist and Cigarette Butt
Wind takes your breath
and smoke,
you exhale, leave
orange filters
on the tourist trail
to drift into layers
of schist
and lichen, you take
a little carbon inside
you don’t even need
to think about,
the remains do
your thinking,
bodies, valleys,
you pass.
Jill Jones’s most recent book is Dark Bright Doors (Wakefield, 2010). In 2009 she co-edited, with Michael Farrell, an anthology, Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets. She lives in Adelaide. Her poem, ‘Schist and Cigarette Butt’ was sparked off, so to speak, by sightings along a tourist trail at Franz Josef Glacier in late 2009.