Desire

All summer, vines and bramble
block the path to the brook.
Black snakes slide through the weeds.

I can see the light shine on the field
of corn stubble that stretches across
the flats. I beat back briers and tangles

of nettles beneath the grove of sumac
choked with a new growth of alders.
A startled pheasant flies up.

Feathers float in a cloud of dust,
coyote and raccoon tracks printed
deep in the mud. Each year

more trees have fallen. I toss
what I can out of the way; sometimes
a rotted trunk breaks in my arms.

The brook runs high and fast
from autumn rains and pounds over
the stones. If I stop to listen,

I hear the wind snap a branch
of pine, deer browse in the grass.
I find myself going further, further.

— WALLY SWIST

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Wally Swist’s new book, Luminous Dream, was chosen as a finalist in the 2010 FutureCycle Poetry Book Award. His scholarly monograph, The Friendship of Two New England Poets, Robert Frost and Robert Francis, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. A recording of a poem from his reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, accompanied by jazz cellist Eugene Friesen, a member of Paul Winter Consort, is archived at npr.org.