After the goats
wandered the forest
in the moon pooled
all luminous
on the sick girl.
I scraped her neck
with a dog fang
and dusted her face
with clay powder.
Then her spirit
turned
like a cure
and I drove a peg
into the ground.
She only came back
to go away.
Another great read from John Swain!
ReplyDeleteI like this poem very much, not simply for the technique, which is very good, but for the meaning which I don't fully understand--that is, the poet's meaning, which is often different from the meaning that a reader will impose on a poem. I've read it twice, loved the language, and maybe I will read it again some night when the moon is full and that wolf is howling in the back of my mind again. He, too, comes "back/to go away" and in that respect I'm very lucky.
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