Jeff Guess

MELALEUCA MORNING Come see the light break come watch the sun Here on this new day Christmas begun Start from the dark branch crown of a king Flowers of purple blossom and cling. Melaleuca morning mantle Cascades from the heat and light Bears upon its royal holly Birth of peace and love and light. Out of the old wood twisted and hard Song of December silent unheard Bursts like a promise onto the stem Amidst the sharp leaves new life begun. Melaleuca morning sunrise From the y

Supposing Him to be the Gardener i. Born Again – Her First Unrecorded Death Mary Magdalen is Baptised by John in the River Jordan a villanelle He holds me as a cup of trembling, from the depths of Jordan’s night, wordless from his hands to morning. Wars, rumours of war, plots and scheming, I have shed seven burdens, now contrite, he holds me as a cup of trembling. Now a woman to His kingdom coming, high above me clouds of nimbus light, wordless from his hands to morning. Gali

Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize 2017 Highly Commended Transgression of the Trees after a now lost avenue of Southern blue gums for roadworks (Eucalyptus leucoxylon) all many hundreds of years old In places the road through the valley is complicated by blue gum blossom. There is no forest in its falling here- it clogs the bitumen with all its best intensity car tyres rebuff all day without emotion. I wish there was something better going on. All week men slashed in t

Sonnet The morning is a grey station of unknowing. Someone waves to me across a curtain of rain and two platforms- I might know but it is too dark to recognize anyone outside of shadowy shapes. Indistinct. I return their wave to keep some kind of connection and somebody else waves back. I imagine today as a series of difficult disconnections where each stranger’s face searches mine for recognition. Jeff Guess ©Jeff Guess 2017

Queensland Poetry Festival – Val Vallis Award Second Prize His Master’s Voice for my father 1. Shovel Beneath a trademark rust - the worn calligraphy of work - still stamped on the shaft. The work ethic of his generation. Not replaced but repaired, over and over again. The patchwork of so many years made stronger always at the broken place. 2. Fishing Sinker Making with him as a child spoon-sinkers for the dragging surf of Christmas beaches. Molten lead - poured into his work

Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2017 Published: Pages 92-95 Sailing off the Sun William Dampier (1651-1715) i. Lately, he had turned unwritten lines in both Swift and Defoe’s imagination; Coleridge found his Ancient Mariner’s rhyme: each in the pulse and lexis of his exploration. In fact, Darwin first trod on his words of taking notice of the natural world. Bligh and Banks, a thousand others stirred by his exquisite mind: a sail unfurled to dreams and ideas that might chart

Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards 2017 Second Prize ‘The Man with the Donkey’ after Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick 1892-1915 i. Casting a small pale shadow on South Shields’ sands he pulled the donkeys into ordinary forgotten afternoons a penny a ride investing only him and his charges with strange fortune striding with whistled courage and a packet of Woodbines into history. ii. An emigrant at seventeen signs on as second steward aboard SS Koringa locked in the stokehole fur

©Jeff Guess 2017

©Jeff Guess 2017

©Jeff Guess 2017