Joan Swift
Joan Swift is the author of
four books of poetry: This Element (Alan Swallow, 1965); Parts of
Speech (Confluence Press, 1978); The Dark Path of Our Names (Dragon
Gate, 1985); and The Tiger Iris (Boa Editions Ltd., 1999).
In addition, in 1997
Chicory Blue Press brought out her chapbook Intricate Moves: Poems About
Rape. She is the recipient of two Washington State Governor’s Awards: in
1986 for The Dark Path of Our Names and in 2000 for The Tiger Iris.
She has been awarded three
National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, as well as a
Washington State Artists grant, an award from the Ingram Merrill Foundation,
and a Pushcart Prize. Her poems also have received the Lucille Medwick Memorial
Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Josephine Miles Memorial Award
from Blue Unicorn. Her work has appeared in more than fifty periodicals
and anthologies.
She holds an M.A. in
English–Creative Writing from University of Washington where she studied in
Theodore Roethke’s last class. She lives with her husband and no cats (he’s
allergic to them) in Edmonds, Washington. They have two grown daughters and two
grandchildren.
Rainy May in the Valley
This is the warp of the loom as it escapes
through the farmhouse window, leaves
the factory behind, slides out the door
of the homely craftswoman who wants to
sell her art at the fair. The threads have
turned silver from traveling so long in the sky
but the shuttle hangs onto its reason
throws a blanket over Whitehorse
woven of heavy meanderings, scraps
caught from the river, strands of the ocean
spun to such thick visibility
the mountain vanishes altogether.
Outside the window, the native species
rise into fabric they love,
cedars and Douglas firs, Pacific dogwood
unfolding white umbrellas inside out.
Each one cups the small drink
it will need later on, after the rain
that wraps all of us now has been sewn
into the web of a spider, glisten of moisture
connecting one branch to another
published in The Yale Review, April 2004;
reprinted on Poetry Daily, May 2004
Geese Flying Over
The geese were flying south over our heads,
calling compass points and wind sheer.
Rain fell hard on all of us, the clouds above
sharing their own way of staying in touch.
I
was running from the parked car
to your house. So were you.
The geese flew in the wild formation they invented:
many wings, like origami, folding to one known place.
I
remember dogs were barking at the geese.
All across the driveway leaves of your ornamental pear
lay in drifts of red, blood red, and wine.
You had recently lost your husband to a heart attack.
Then suddenly the geese were gone.
The sky dropped low above us.
Time for lamplight on your husband’s
collection of wooden lures for fishing
through ice. They swam across the table,
the shine of their paint that spoke to other fish.
We sipped Ethiopian coffee.
I
imagined the geese falling asleep among tules
and that weathered artifact outside your door
he bought you at a county fair, black
paint chipped and claws still hanging on,
saying to the mist, “Two old crows live here.”
published in Smartish Pace, No. 12, Summer 2005
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