Birds & Bards
Tree Swallows
Photo by Mark Seth Lender
My Swallows
For hours I sit here facing the white wall
and the dirty swallows. If I move too much,
I will lose everything, if I even breathe,
I'll lose the round chest and the forked tail
and the nest above the window, under the ceiling.
As far as shame, I think I have lived too long
with only the moonlight coming in to worry
too much about what it looks like. I have given
a part of my mind away, for what it's worth
I have traded half of what I have--
I'll call it half--so I can see these smudges
in the right light. I think I live in ruins
like no one else, I see myself as endlessly
staring at what I lost, I see me mourning
for hours, either worn away with grief
or touched with simple regret, but free this time
to give myself up to loss alone. I mourn
for the clumsy nest and I mourn for the two small birds
sitting up there above the curtains watching--
as long as I am there--and I mourn for the sky
that makes it clear and I mourn for my two eyes
that drag me over, that make me sit there singing,
or mumbling or murmuring, at the cost
of almost everything else, my two green eyes,
my brown--my hazel, flecked with green and brown--
and this is what I'll do for twenty more years,
if I am lucky--even if I'm not--I'll live
with the swallows and dip through the white shadows
and rest on the eaves and sail above the window.
This is the way I have lived, making a life
for more than twenty years--for more than forty--
out of this darkness; it was almost a joy,
almost a pleasure, not to be foolish or maudlin,
sitting against my wall, closing my eyes,
singing my dirges.
--Gerald Stern
* * *
Field Notes
On the Connecticut River Tree Swallows gather in Fall, accumulating force of numbers before they leave. Late in the day they are gray-black against the sky but their true color is a brilliant, electric blue. They swirl into the sky forming a great funnel of birds then plummet, full speed, into the island marsh below hitting the reeds and grabbing hold like jets snagging the line on the deck of a flattop. Except when Tree Swallows go hunting, fattening up to withstand the rigors of migration, only insects die.
--Mark Seth Lender* * *
"My Swallows" by Gerald Stern from This Time: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1984 by Gerald Stern. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
