Swans at a Pond by JFK Airport
.
…….resemble cranes,
the construction kind; one of the pair has begun to assemble
…….a nest as big
as a sleeping adult human being. No rest
…….accrues to the
weary, if the weary are or expect to be parents; but no blues,
…….no keening, no
jeremiads are in order, just advice they won’t hear: take it slow;
…….try, at least, to
make plans you won’t have to keep: you, too, will cry.
…….Futurity
appears here as several bits of mess: split sticks, dull loot
…….our trenches leave,
prismatic drinking straws, and bottlenecks belie the merely emotional power
…….source that some of
us find in recycling, as if we could rescue a watershed by collating apple cores,
…….as if goodness
were easy to recognize, and the distinction of eros from caritas
…….elementary.
O swans, mute, self-appointed landed gentry
…….whose work confines
itself to the under-studied and overlooked, further reports would only confuse
…….us who travel
in such exhausting, overbearing vehicles, and make ourselves ridiculous
…….thereby. It is
not we who own the air.
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