Poetry

By

John Swain

A Silver Chain to Break

Cry of the silence, then I wail

with the dogs

at January in her array of iron teeth.

I struck my claws on the gun metal sky

with a raven

black in the blackening aspen tree.

Flood of the night sun come

when I crawled

from the wreckage of a twisted grave

in the hard ground God frozen

to bend my ordinary shovel.

The river is a silver chain to break

my heart, this time

confining me to the depression she leaves.

Arrow of my veins lead me

back into the power and mystery

we all deprive.

John Swain

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