swans
Published in the collection LadyBird Bug Boy (2018) Montreal: Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters. Edition of 115.
i.
Two french curves cut the river’s cloth, making lace.
Fading tapestries in their wake glimmer and expire
as they stroke sun-dried docks, dilapidate maples.
Branches laden with new life sway in raptured masses,
clamouring to extol Kawartha’s crowning jewels—
their diamond-white down adorning the verdant shore.
I’m painting a rowboat in Tuckahoe with broad bands of yellow,
pausing to admire this distance between the homely tones
of artifice and the devil-may-care of swans.
I am struck by the thought: “I have never seen a comet,” never
been witness to an Icarus or the fission redemption of Phaedon,
but this moment might do—these are celestial bodies.
Like ripened buds of cotton in autumn they are stark, ever
effervescent and naked. I take on the trance of a sponge preceding
absorption. Dreaming. My land-loving form forgotten.
In tandem, they dive as lovers do: headlong and cares akimbo
whispering vows where only riprap will hear. They scream sweet
nothings in icy blue and sing pink for the broken-hearted.
ii.
I heard the eulogy for Thomas while listening to “As It Happens.”
Snow blind. Snow White. Polyamorous and gay. He fell
hopelessly for Henry—his pomegranate mouth and elegant neck.
Against the tide for thirty years, through seasons of flood and feast,
through triangular fantast dances, lagoons of unseen sadness
they made an unwavering love: the king-size of yours forever.
This avian irreverence. Black swan. Wild goose. Rarer birds, now
honoured as online memes. Oblivious to fringe; biologies of borders.
Is it queer to concede I covet them? How I wish that those birds were us?