The swallow bends its flight on an invisible hinge,
skims the air above the garden, lands between
the row of kale and row of carrots and pecks
at the straw before flying away with one
golden piece dangling from her beak.
She carries it to a place between the house
and gutter where I had never noticed before a gap.
How does she know how to see such things—
to fly past a wall or a roof or a cliff and know there,
there is the place where I should build a nest.
And how does she know what materials to choose,
this straw, this grass, this bit of what looks like nothing
to me? In my own house, I sometimes try
to build a house—scraps of softnesses
and thoughtfulnesses, snatches of sweetness.
I weave them into a nest that no one else can see.
It’s only recently I’ve noticed it myself, this blind drive
toward making a home out of oddments and fragments
and notions. It’s only recently I’ve noticed this, too,
how everything I build, I pull apart.
I like how you use that word “hinge” up top, such a visual way for the reader to see the bird’s flight, and to open the poem too. I wonder if that 3rd line could use a break after the word “carrots” because it would soften the possibility that you are growing pecks with your carrots:-) Line 10, maybe the word she for I, as you as I enter the poem soon after. Such a lovely nesting poem.
That is a very very good catch in line 3, ha! I had not considered what it might be to grow a peck 🙂 Xo r
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 at 7:29 PM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “How It Is”
WordPress.com