No wildness here. Fountain, nest-box, feeder—
the pond itself—all man-made. We walk across
the hospital car park, half-empty in summer evening
with its surround of tame plantings, neat
golden daylily mounds, cerise scentless roses
bricks, benches, sidewalk. We can still see the highway
stoplights in their cycles, but ignore the traffic
all faceless humanity; we are only this family of three
and we have come for the swans. We pause
at the prescribed seat, admire them at a distance
with their attendant ducks. Our girl tugs us onward
and the male now sails his wings, drifting close
stern-eyed, closer still, huge and real and fearsome
but here are the young with their mother, pearl-gray
slight, arching their necks, sipping the water
learning majesty, teaching joy in small doses
This is really lovely. I particularly like your closing line. I want to say it’s elegiac, even though it’s so planted in the now, but I’m worried I’ll sound pretentious.
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No, not sounding pretentious at all. 🙂 I like that reading of it! Thank you.
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I love the opening line. **
So good to read your poetry! Haven’t been a regular lately.
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I’m always glad to hear from you when you get a chance to stop by. 🙂
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No wilderness here… and yet. Lovely.
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Just a bit…and a surprise. Thank you.
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‘Learning majesty…’ love this line 🙂
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Thank you for that. I was just reading this over and wondering if I had used the right word there. 🙂
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It worked for me :))
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Beautiful, Jennifer. I can picture the entire scene, and that last line–just wonderful!
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Thanks so much. I always wonder if the very vivid picture in my head can make it out through the words.
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Yes, they did! 🙂
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I’m in love with that last line, Jennifer. “Learning majesty” sounds so right in the context of swans.
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Thank you–I’m glad I didn’t second-guess myself out of that one. 🙂
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You definitely painted the scene. Cinematic. I’m taken with the attendant ducks. (K)
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The ducks were wonderful! I spent a couple more lines on them in the original draft. Maybe they need their own poem.
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I think they do.
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One of those little pearls of time, described and added to the string of memories. I really like this.
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Thank you, Claudia. To process it like this is a way to keep it in memory. “pearls of time”–love that.
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I, too, love that last line. “learning majesty, teaching joy in small doses” Wonderful! I was really enjoying the shift from the concrete/hospital to cars, to your family, to the male and then to the female and the babies – that progression makes them all the more delicate. But that last line ties it all together beautifully and pulls it deeper.
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Thank you for the careful reading. It’s pretty prose-y–like hospital parking lots–but I like how it turned out. 🙂
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I could see and almost touch the swans here! Such great writing, as per usual!
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Thanks for your encouragement!
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I hate swans, but you made spending time with them sound so…lovely. I really liked “stoplights in their cycles”, the ceasing of “stop” and the movement of “cycles”.
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Thank you for hanging in there past the title. 😉
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This is intimately lyrical. I can feel the curve of the swan neck in the writing. Gorgeous.
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Thank you, Meg.
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Wonderful stuff. We used to see a pair of swans on the lake near our old house, and then one day it was just one. Great reading, too! I really enjoyed it.
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Thank you, very kind. I might get hooked on this reading thing. 🙂
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Love this. Watch out for swans, though. They can be mighty mean if they’re protecting their babies. I’ve been attacked, I know firsthand, lol!
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I believe it! There was a beat or two of fear as the big one came right up to the bank with such a look in his eye…
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This is set up so nicely, how the two families mimic each other and interact. And the end is so unexpected and sweet. It pulls it all together.
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Oh, gee, you saw something I didn’t see myself. Thank you.
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