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Posts Tagged ‘swallow’

Soul Searching

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »


                  after “Stone” by Charles Simic


I cannot make them out, 
these strange writings 
on my inner walls. 
Each time I feel closer
to deciphering the marks,
it’s as if they rearrange
themselves into new
more mysterious lines. 
Some part of me deeply
wants to read them, 
to know their secrets.
She takes out her eraser,
her pencil, and begins 
the translations again.
Some part of me sits
easily in the midst of all 
I do not understand. 
She watches the swallows
trace shapes in the air
with the dark inky tips 
of their wings. 

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How It Is

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2015| 2 Comments »

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.

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