SWALLOWS

Reading myself to sleep over a second hand anthology
Somewhere between Beowulf and Delmore Schwartz
She calls out from downstairs to show me something
Where she and the kids are dancing rock and roll.
Groggy from food and drink I won't come and see
And I remember the too sweet familiar lines
Dropping off in the still air of the close room.
By the time I get to see what she's talking about
It's midnight cool and I find the small white circle
Framed in a wood crosspiece at the top window
Beaming out through fog above a liquid stripe that runs
Under its influence between banks of mud and rock.

When something like this happens I wait around
To pick up any words or phrases with special color
Or texture I can twist into my current expression.
Trying to develop a style that's pleasant and unique
I read theory by a Czech emigre in a literary magazine.
I hear a regional poet who teaches creative writing
And gets off a new one every week or two
Explain the hurt man who lives in Stevens' lion--
A stale joke with paws that couldn't kill a thing.
Yesterday a deluge and torrents but today the weather clears
A string of birds are resting on the phone wire
Outside my window and I start with that.

The flood sails over obstructions in a glassy motion
And a delicate curl. Glacial boulders
Break the black surface with noise and splash.
On a level stretch the current moves at a slower pace
And I like to see it quietly gush and roll on the far side
Fanning out in a broad V-pattern with ripples as it trails away.
When I'm lucky enough to find some rapids where waters
Drop with energy they pick up white like clouds
And fall with active bubbles and froth into a pool below.
Color depends on the depth and the volume
Of air that's blown in. The deepest ones are dark
And the shallows reflect light even without sun.

I tell about the swallows who this year
Give up the barn and porch settling instead
High under the gable end of our old house.
I compare them with the poet's blackbird--that solid speck.
Try dolphin fox rabbit crab--none of them quite right.
My birds balance on a line flipping tails or flapping wings.
Newcomers rest quietly at the end of the row
Or peck and jab scaring one another off.
They preen and stretch their wings the down blows up
In a soft breeze and they scatter all at once.
For that moment I lose all feeling
I have to share my personal view of things.

She's out for the day. I take a break and relax
With a tape I copied years ago. Wing to wing
In a swift chase or watching in empty silence
The little fluffs will soon be gone for good.
A fiddler in a black suit sings Haydn to me over again
Through the graceful hole behind the wires
And I look by the closed eyes the chin and the face
Full of emotion I can't share hearing only
The clear substance flowing in the old man's voice.
Have you noticed how a work of art
Can be as real for us as anything?
Watch his hands to understand the trick.

Jay NY 8/20/94