New Poetry Collection - In the Apricot Darkness

These poems are now being published daily under 'recent posts' on my blog and will be shortly available as an eBook that can be read online or downloaded for free.

In the Apricot

Darkness 

Jeff Guess

Sherwin & Stone

For

Helen, Lindsay, Michael and Miriam

  Many of the poems in this collection have appeared in

literary magazines, newspapers and have won prizes.

Copyright © 2025 Jeff Guess

First published 2025 by Sherwin & Stone

Published Collections

Leaving Maps (Friendly Street Poets, 1984)

Four in the Afternoon (Studio, 1987)

Painting the Town: The Gawler Poems (Wakefield Press, 1988)

Replacing Fuses in the House of Cards (Poetry Australia, 1988)

Rites of Arrival: Poems from Museums of the History Trust of SA (Wakefield Press, 1990)

Selected Sonnets (Collins/A&R, 1991)

Living in the Shade of Nothing Solid (Five Islands Press, 1998)

Winter Grace (Five Islands Press, 2004)

The Silent Classroom (Pembroke School, 2008)

Autumn in Cantabile (Trinity College, 2011)

Supposing Him to be the Gardener: The Mary Magdalen Suite (Sherwin & Stone, 2017)

Scanning the Soul (Sherwin & Stone, 2019) 

The River of Footsteps: Selected Haiku (Sherwin & Stone, 2019)

Meditations (Sherwin & Stone 2020)

The Translation of Rain: Selected Poems (Sherwin and Stone 2020)

The Bee Farm (Sherwin & Stone 2021)

Collected Sonnets (Sherwin & Stone 2022)

Personal Choice (Sherwin & Stone 2023)

Home Before Dark (Sherwin & Stone 2024)

Anthologies

The No. 12 Friendly Street Reader (Friendly Street Poets 1987)

The Inner Courtyard: A South Australian Anthology of Love Poetry (Wakefield Press 1990)

The House Next Door (Salisbury Council 1992)

The No. 18 Friendly Street Reader (Friendly Street Poets 1994)

Poetry after Lunch: The University Readings (Adelaide University 1996)

A Fall of Rainbows (Williamstown Women Writers 1997)

No Strings Attached (Eremos 1999)

New Poets Seven (Friendly Street Poets/Wakefield Press 2002)

Encounters (Ariel 2002)

Two Schools of Thought (Pembroke School 2008)

My Teacher is a Ballerina (Trinity College 2011)

Textbooks

Hands on Poetry (Twilight Publishing 1991; republished Dominie 1993)

Writing Poetry (TAFE SA 2008)

Contents

 Something woke me

This house has been at sea all night

The massif elevation of clouds

Sunday morning

Hundreds of tiny trumpets

Pruning of the vines

This sport's field

The stubble fields

The lantana in the south garden

The road to bougainvillia sunrise

Pitching hay

A gum tree in the rain

A quince tree

A red-rump parrot

An eagle

Half hinged between green and gold

Here now this long dead tree

A foxglove

A single milk thistle

A three-cornered jack

A woman picking blackberries

Afternoon is deep in winter

Agapanthus

Almond trees

Along this garden path

Back from the old shoulder of a road

Because you are here

Beneath the War Memorial Shrine

Chairs have been brought in

Consider the gum leaf

Having flown a century ago

Hold perfect rose

I don’t want to live

In this Japanese garden

In this late afternoon

Just in this moment

Moss is a way

Norfolk Island pines

Now is the time of the crab

Out from white bricks

Outside the convent window

Over the fence Frances says

Paddymelons

Parklands

Poppies

See how these Iceberg roses

See how winter conspires

Shifting the roses

Silver air is crystallized with ice

Soft-brown calligraphy of leafless branches

Sour sobs smear

Sunlight the colour

Tall enough

The grapefruit tree

The gum trees are stripping

The North Terrace gardener

The olive tree must live as long as age

The road to leafless poplars

This afternoon I pruned the fig

This garden that I planted

This gum tree

This is the soft brush

Thistles at sunset

Upon this paddock

When Dioscorides

When you pin

Where they are picking olives

White Lillies

Wind in the wheat down from the ranges

Winter light is best

Winter two days old

Winter Willows