Spring
I’m hooked on watching debonair ferns
unfurl tight croziers. A permanent spring,
cows flick tails in clouds of milky heliotrope,
heat roots down in days too light and too long.
Tendrils flower and fruit, lose their sense
of where to stop. Nothing will be outside garden
when everything is garden: a tangled reverie.
I’m in hot-weather gear all the time, wrong gases
fixing in wrong places, growing unpredictable.
The grey towers flower gold. I will get used to great things
like war in reverse: metal and concrete opening
as loose substrate meadows need.
My soft bed will be rose petals on coral sand,
flamboyant lichens crust the rocks of my bones.
My Sweet Bear
My sweet bear, I have made a crown
of hazel and wisteria. Sweet pollen dusts
your lovely eyes. Poor I am without you
as my spectacle. Like your cub I am
sniffing the ground where you were:
there you are, there you are not,
there you are not again. You would bounce
and stand a chance but for your chains
which chink back and forth through hoops.
I hold down your head and pull out your teeth.
How alike we are, you up on your darling legs,
walking as if getting the hang of high heels.
The sky is the only way out from the dogs.
I take your crown and your pain doubles,
our kiss fills with the blood of the world.
© All text and images belong to Sean Swallow. All work is protected by copyright.