Magnolia

I have often dreamed of the Magnolia,

outside my office window, resplendent

in bloom, where Raven now perches

high in the branches of this a rare tree:

a Saucer Magnolia.

Raven scans the arboretum for

other trees, all distant cousins

of humans and animals. Raven

has heard them speak and watched

as lovers have gathered to seclude

themselves under the Weeping

American Elm, that cloaks

them in scented darkness.

Raven regards more of this

landscape and the path,

wide as a road, that bifurcates

the arboretum, listening keenly

to the whispers of the silky

enveloping Magnolia blossoms.

Swanson is a widely published poet and fiction writer who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. Her poems have been featured twice in The Missouri Review. Her work has appeared in the Southern Review, Black Warrior Review, the Denver Quarterly, the Bloomsbury Review, the American Poetry Journal, and in many other notable publications. Awards include an NEA Fellowship. She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Her first poetry collection, A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium, won the Ruth Stevens Award (NFSP Press) and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and her second collection of poetry, Trembling in the Bones—about the Colorado Coal strike of 1913 and the 1914 Ludlow Massacre—was reissued in 2013 ( 3: A Taos Press). Her third poetry collection is Memory’s Rooms (Conundrum Press). Her fourth poetry collection, Non Finito, will be released by Fernwood Press in 2021. She is also a fiction writer who has published a novel and two collections of short stories. Her second collection, Exiles and Expatriates, won the 2014 Press Americana Prize. She mentors incarcerated men at the Colorado Sterling Correctional Facility, and she regularly reads from her work in the Denver Metro area.