Sword Swallower
       

1
The soul enters the body

through the mouth.
So the legends say.

I say: the soul enters
through childhood.

2
A barn with its doors left open
fills with night swallows.
In the hayloft
certain dark sections
flicker with movement,
the dimension of depth.

Finally, stillness. The moon—
a threshing tool
revealed in the diminished light.
The glint of its blade.

And the earth under a black quilt.

3
Sleep: that ancient union
of death with its body.
The child sleeps.
As in—the child returns
to the time before her body.

But the earth always adjusts.
A blueness pools in the shadows.
Dawn pierces her
with its strange dream.
The birds open their throats, cry out—

4
Before language, there was just
the peculiar house of nerves.
Now the world is buried in me, to the hilt.
The sun burns off the mist.
I take my violence out over the field.

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Copyright © 2015 Jenny George All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission