John Swain- Three Poems

Daggerleaf Flat 

Across the flat of ocotillo and daggerleaf,

the earth ruptured disappearing into a box canyon,

I hallucinated spaces when the sky followed.

A golden eagle blackened the arid vastness

and then vanished again to the raging sun,

my ideas chaos as a dry thorn warmed my cheek.

Touching blood the color of rocks and dirt

allowed the lizards to enter

a shaman’s dreams beneath the flowering palo verde.

The cloudless desert brought a feral longhorn

to the lip of the cliff, this taurus constellation shined

above a pile of bones in the waterless dust.

Bared to the silence here,

summoned through myself to desolation,

I dragged my former corpse from the wash. 

Black Mesa

Mesa of ashes abrupt from the sand,

I windowed my fear

to be honest with the landscape’s power.

Snow upon the distant mountains belies

the lashing sun upon my back,

I covered my eyes with a red cloth

searching the light for the ascetic’s God.

A coyote roamed the terraced stones

and then became a desert stone

forged with a moment’s lightning.

I cannot pray under your watching sky

even if you are dark and quiet

as the burrows of rattlesnakes and owls.

Red petroglyphs on the western face

told the story of a hunt

forever to this passing day.

I freshened my mouth with water

and smoke 

for the soaring raven to escape the death

it shadows upon our fata mirage. 

Tinajas

I followed cat tracks between the crossing arroyos

until the tracks became white stone. 

Cottonwoods vibrant green against the desert sky

led to the slip between two hills

where rows of dripping ferns covered a holy cavern

at the base of a sheer wall. 

I watched the water fall in every color through the ferns

into a bowl beginning a stream.

A snake eats a mouse in the clearing,

I dug into my lip with a flint to unlock my jaw

to swallow the hurt purity of this meaningful absence

as lions haunt the dry slopes. 

The world dances like a goddess in painted skin,

the deer rut,

I planted a broken antler in the hot sand. 

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