Trance

Cliff swallows, swirling from their mud jar nests
like smoke. All day long, I’ve been in a trance—
half-in and half-out of my body, gazing down at
scrimshawed caliche, up at the aerial arabesques.
I’m waiting for a hypnotist to walk back behind
me, nod to the audience then snap his fingers.
It’s then I’d see I was clinging to a lighting rig 50
feet up, not daubing clay on the concrete girder
of a highway overpass to make myself a home.