And There Were Swallows

 RAY GONZALEZ

Tadpoles seeing the future for the first time, monuments against the tide when the bats flew in and out of Carlsbad Caverns, cycles of burned ghosts who fell into the secret caves in the late nineteenth century.

And there were swallows in the memory of lust, hundreds of them guarding the opening in the desert, shadows plunging below the waist to guess where the body begins, where the soul stops searching, darting wings captivated by the flame in the will where the wind becomes the sound inherited after stepping too far into the mind.

And there were swallows diving into the cave, unafraid of dropping scarves in their paths, the women who left them there wandering deeper into the caverns without kings or their husbands’ pyres lighting the way. Destiny oozed down the walls to forgive the birds for trapping themselves this far down. 

And there were swallows coming up, abandoning the search for the soliloquy of dust, an absence of light giving them the urge to feed and rise, make way for the bats because there is no need to delight the mushrooms growing in the black cave—the path of terror ripening on dark shelves below the opening in the earth where the swallows were landing, where the swallows were still.