John Swain- Three Poems

Black Bear Hood

A black bear scanned the forest from a dead tree

and scampered down in an instant

watching me tremble through the shrub berries.

I felt the red pitcher plant tease at my ankle 

to drown a fly

as the bear ran splashing through the black water.

I traced the claw scrapings on the sand and trees,

I entered the tree bends wearing a mirror to find

a glimpse of the joining like branches and vines.

The sunset of sticks and leaves a tinder coal to cauterize

the horizon’s wandering pain

until the darkness unfolded a bear hood to silence.

My focus sharpened in litanies to another beast

emerging with young from the forest,

their heart a golden fire in the center of my eyes. 

The Singing Jar

In the cove I wallowed to gather a floating eagle feather

and severed blue heron claw 

for a singing jar.

The lapsing distance fell closer to the shell-stone shore

in the wake of a barge taking coal,

sun and rain blurred grey as the lake crashing against the hull

and back to rattle beneath my hands.

Bird flight electric in my spine,

shadows move on the ground like the trees are running

where I want and cannot go.

Like a knife at my side the sky wandered the lines

to an opening where water fell over boulders back to the lake

for an afterworld.

I followed the forested gorge

as the waking rhododendrons leaves sprouted green 

with a white blossom through the last snow.

Laguna Madre 

Thornbrush on the shallow coast,

high winds changed the shapes of trees

in arches these holy women spinning

with constancy these gathering years.

Mists of white pelicans and white tailed hawk

tesselate like a heaven on the floodplain

as erratic waves break on the shore.

Howls around a coyote skeleton in the mud,

voices of earth in my voice for a thunderer

of the wild divine.

Trudging the slow miles keeping each step, 

I carried the cleaned coyote skull on my back 

as a devouring amulet against the harms

I have myself created.

Like bruises and bruise

the changing colors of air and sea merge

to burn a looking circle on my palm.

I swim through this open water with the fish

as dusk rustles in the yucca

to be born in hiding with the moon.

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