Eric Nelson: “With Swifts”
WITH SWIFTS
The sun just a dim idea, the sky gone
from blue to burnt orange,
we wound our way to the top of the parking deck
to watch them arrive.
Not en masse as we’d expected, but one or two
at a time streaking into view from everywhere.
Slowly, the few grew into dozens
circling haphazardly, out of sync, some coasting
above the foundry’s old chimney,
some darting randomly for insects, all of them
looking less like birds than windblown cinders.
When it grew too dark to see anything but darkness,
invisible to each other, we saw what we wanted—
to be carried away on a carpet of birds, bank
into a cloud of almost knowing and scroll
down the chimney’s mouth like sacred
text, down into dark, undisturbed
rest as the city’s halo floats
over us and its all-night
music calls us out.
Eric Nelson‘s books include Horse Not Zebra, Some Wonder, Terrestrials, and The Interpretation of Waking Life. Nelson’s poems have also appeared in many journals, including The Sun, Oxford American, Poetry, Verse Daily, and Poetry Daily.