John Swain- Three Poems

Eave of the House

Sound of wheels on the gravel,

the light of early October spreading like honeysuckle

as cornstalks began to fall,

the lavender horizon waved like the drape of a bier

over a close girl changing in age

beneath a seeing lantern.

Hand in hand

we sat on the pale grass,

at dusk the red hawk curved behind the line of trees

taking a squirrel

to the eave of the house

dripping like a willow.

Thumb and finger separate the paper tape

of cedar sticks and sandalwood to burn for fragrance

I doubt will surround

nighttime fluid as the black creek painted stones,

then we will follow the cricket vibrations to sleep

becoming soon the fallow of this ground. 

South Dakota Canyon

Spiked with snake fang and hoof,

a brilliant sun flows through the canyon

like a pronghorn springs from the wildcat 

I dissolve into a landscape steppe

with no man permitted to define

another’s limitation.

This blue is endless

though anyone could sing for themselves

when the world is silent.

Meridian winds become a vortex

like the heart’s correspondence in cipher,

I drift into the eagle’s shadow

among the hares and white stones

discovered in a departed remembering,

the last rain pooled inside a deer skull

where holy men drink and bathe like a lake

reveals its depth to one cup’s lip.

Knee Deep Water

Above the oak tree arisen from pressed bed grass

a grey harrier scraped

talons upon the whetstone of the sky curve,

the air and bird merged

when you spit bark tea into your unfolded hands

like a planted book vanishes in passing time.

I was born under the ash of the eaten deer

with cut blood to its antlers ending in fall,

I named a holy day in freezing knee deep water.

The wind left a rainstorm on the dying plain

staked with twin rivers a wild horse grazes,

later, the fire warmed a common ruby in my pocket.

The colors of the turning road echo in my skull

to become myself

forgotten in the wash sounding a profound mass.

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Red Paint Hill published his first collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.