Jeff Guess

The Pardalotes have come back to my garden! I have not seen a pardalote in Gawler for probably three decades. Then, they were a popular and regular visitor to my garden. The threats to pardalotes and in fact many of our native birds are - Climate Change. Climate change is one of the most publicised conservation issues of our time. Coastal Development. Disturbance of Breeding Birds. Environmental Flows. Fire & Burning Regimes. Habitat Clearance & Fragmentation. Invasive Specie

The Last Day of Autumn To Autumn BY JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think war

From goodness itself only good can spring. And what proceeds from that can only be ordered well. Therefore, everything should be accepted for the best. Who thus understands the divine, and loves it, is divine by nature, good in practice, joyful in hope, blessed in reward. Marsilio Ficino (1433 - 1499) Neoplatonist philosopher and leader of the Platonic Academy in Florence. Influential in the rise of the Renaissance. ©Jeff Guess 2018

Ruined Chapel Here beneath the wind’s contrition and above the ephemeral splendour of the grass it has both carefully managed and maintained the stations of eternal things. Now it has become a sky scoured shell where falling stones refill a vault of empty praise the closed gospel of a winter’s morning decades past when the last of two centuries of prayer drifted like the vagaries of wood smoke into airy nothingness as the congregation went home. And is there nothing left of h

Sunrise 7am, Saturday 26th May ©Jeff Guess 2018

Two Views of Semaphore, South Australia. ©Jeff Guess 2018

from 'Replacing Fuses in the House of Cards) 1988 (Poetry Australia) ©Jeff Guess 2018

'The Beehive Corner' Corner of King William Road and Rundle Mall Adelaide South Australia The Beehive Corner a sonnet She stands in a long tradition here of waiting: and lovers late. With small caught rain on dark magenta shoes. Behind her back and under glass - rows of chocolate cannot tempt her from a vigil of thought and expectation. The shape of one: drawn from the anonymous crush of feet, into a palpable presence - that brings together the ends of every meeting; sad or o

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” Albert Camus ©Jeff Guess 2018

'Autumn Leaves The falling leaves drift by my window The falling leaves of red and gold . . .' ©Jeff Guess 2018