The Embankment
Herons where the diverted channel ponds at the embankment.
Arches of snapped trees hold the herons in their reflection
still as a hieroglyph.
Decomposing leaves in the water produce a bitter humid odor
as bales of turtles sun then disappear from the sandstone.
Noon poised on the char of clouds when
I looked through the translucent crescent of a red hawk wing
and the palatial sky between us closed for an instant.
Adrift in the billows like a pleasure,
I rested in the bed shade of the beech as the ecstatic
blue presence of a celebrant sealed herself in my ring.
The summer sun screamed like a red-shouldered hawk in wind.
For the Reign Succeeding
Winter crystallized over hazel twigs like a divination
I could never learn to practice,
yellow ribbons of blossoms sweeten the shrouded day.
Scent beneath her arms ennobled our cleanest linens,
the white sheet buried there like an expanse of sky
which the gyrfalcon reveals like a seer.
Dawn opens itself like a woman's beautiful nakedness
as we swim suspended in pools of lavender air
where the cold sand compressed into red jeweled glass.
The heraldic sea proclaims its language from a spike bed
like a pressed bed of poppies she pleases me to fear.
Then the ships with nets of fish enter the snowy harbor,
I imagine the silver of its mirror left entire
for the emanating glimpse of a tender reign succeeding.
Given Weeping Willows
Astounded by diffusions through slight leaves,
we gently lean against the sloping moss bank
where the willow tree dips its gilt hems in the stream.
Esther laughed beautifully in a smoke wreath
and said the water turned my blue eyes green.
Prayer orders of the animals bequeathed our vestments
while the hawk transformed the squirrel into hawk
and the wolves transformed the deer into wolves,
(for the regal living claim the sainted prey within us).
The wind trembles in the weeping willow shaman limbs
as the day awakes in lithe movements of hallucination.
Clover on the Levee
Clover shines a softening green on the levee.
The river divests itself of the confining banks
and the falls vanish
as the water above flows level with the pool beneath.
The river thrashes in a violent turbulence,
debris of trees and barrels circles in a maelstrom
while the absence of shorebirds is noticeable,
island rocks of egret colonies are now sunken castles.
The green sky of lightning overtakes the prism sky
and I am alone in the chamber,
fountain worms emerge from the saturated ground.
The sycamores bent halfway underwater still me
as the evening concludes like a tryst,
the swollen river is pregnant with creatures of ember.
John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Catalyst Magazine, Rust and Moth, and Journal of Truth and Consequence.
