Slow, sick deer
dragged down openings of damp and silver lush
I see pale white gristle, a gift from the coyotes
to roundworms and brown mice
In thundersnow the doe lay dead
bloated velvet, then suede
until it is worn off and lost
being only felled flagpoles
on the swelling surface of the Moon
In present townward plodding
the Hampton Union depreciates
behind cracked glass constellations—
a dollar at daybreak, a quarter at noon.
Bells that chime once when you pop in
and aught when you get
Frontierschild
on the Greenway with an azalea switch
where children compose their poems—
running in packs through the tall grass,
or fanning out, but always scribbling upon the hill
Flank the camp of ponytails
and overalls holding powwow
near the reeds with primitive swords,
peeled raw and whooshing wind
Come upon them slowly,
understandingly, and silent
in leaderless battalions
tailing cursive script paths
But flush them out nonetheless—all,
and indeed they do; you and I barking
from the edge of the field like squirrels
when the sky goes pink. Come back,
come back and fingerpaint us something
pretty. There’s a dog hair on your lip
worn like a feather in Ferdinand’s cap
The Old Guitarist
I had no common sense even then
Too much in the spirit of the search,
my grandpa would say, I seen you
at the window when the sitter pulls in
Ever heard of a bootless errand?
Her ’83 Pontiac LeMans, a loose hand
trying the door, then rummaging for keys—
Lori? I said
The other end of adolescence, I thought,
should reveal The Old Guitarist he sought
in me, strung out like laundry on a line—
that deep blue interlude
I was to play between a life in lieu,
requited only by the consistency of its
soothsaying—a song structured to uphold
the posture of aging self-constructs where
I am to be grateful, like for my bones
Rising mountains
Rising higher beyond what
their tattered horizon can alone bare—
Murk Swain has spent the last several years farming, wandering, and working as an invasive plants biologist in the Red Hills of north Florida. He enjoys trespassing (and those who trespass against him), faunal greetings, and fires. He'll doss down and doff dawn early, quoting Knut Hamsun; or get Whataburger at 2 a.m. with the best of them.