John Swain - Poems

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Least Bittern Books published his second collection, Under the Mountain Born.

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               Black Mountain Crest
 
Sky at the eagle black height
where the mountain arose
broken from my chest
above the frozen stream still
in its movement of blue rain.
 
Days of the sun and the light
I despised for my tiredness,
weak and ungrateful, disease
in the water where an elk fell
through ice in the shallow.
 
I fall asleep among the rocks
where I was born, being one
with no one, my outstretched
arms become a winter tree
giving nothing to your want.
 
 
                    The Falcon Towers
 
A tree in the sea fog wall,
the falcon towers
where the hill descends
to follow her contours
empowered by their rarity.
 
The sky changes water
where her fierce eye masks
desire. I gather bones
from the cliff to pierce
my skin as she departs.
 
Mistress in disappearance,
I will not waver
as your unknown throes
beset the reckoning world
with a fire world
inside your heart to conjure.
 
 
                               In Beginning
 
When a crow
touched the earth
of stone
an ocean grew
from the water
in her womb.
 
Black valleys
she came
from the sun
to give us love
for the world
she took
from darkness.
 
I undressed
in a circle
of feathers
inside the trees
with my mouth
to her mouth
of the winds.