Page 52 - WTP Vol. XI #6

45
To Swallows
I. After Frost
“There was never a sound beside the wood but one”: my old reel mower rolling over ground
with a steady purr as if proud of itself
for being itself indifferent to heat and sun,
while I, lulled a little by its sound,
worked on, encouraged by its readiness
to speak and so affirm again this hour
or two of labor that I’ve assigned myself
by reminding me of another chance to look
out for those where’d-they-come-from swallows, flashing orange and blue like airborne flowers, dipping low to check on where I’ll rake,
their sight one happy prize my weekend knows: to mow again as if for gleaning swallows.
II. At the Lake
Do you remember the dock
with the awning on Clear Lake just large enough to tuck
a boat or two under
(small ones)
and the broad expanse
of the lake to the west
where the sun descended
and from deck chairs
we watched a boat pull a skier— we could barely hear it—
with a whiskey each
from some loch or glen
a long arc round the world
in the other direction?
We had driven all day from north to south to this still point
as good as any
for a global center.
I was about to get up
to freshen our drinks
when we noticed swallows
swooping in under the awning to feed their young
in their cupped nest of mud and grass wedged into
an upper corner
of this human construction
as they tend to seek out
in return for the spark of fire old Swallow once filched
from the gods for us
a theft repaid by a lightning bolt that took out a few tailfeathers.
So scissortailed
barn swallow
swarte salopade
as the old poem says swarthy, dark coated omitting that touch of orange for the spark stolen
but in a troop
swooping in off the water off the mountain slopes along the wooded shore dipping and turning
to the beat of insect wings
as over a meadow
a mower’s been mowing
as over a lake rich
in its own late summer harvest
in and out and in again and again even “to the eaves of human children”
having long been hinged— forever it seems—
to our nearness.
david HaMilTon