Bird of delight
Screaming joy and soaring on the updrift
Predicting sun and spring and clement weather
Building nests of clay and filling them with yellow beaks
Open for insects and feed.
Fast as lightning the black wings arch through warm air
Its tail flickers and the world changes.
What aspirations needs a bird?
Elegant in black and white
It’s only goal is the next meal,
The next flight.
Sky-high ecstasy
Has simple expressions
Bird of sorrow.
High in the evening sky
The black birds circle,
Crying out their grief.
And the watcher,
The listener
Shudders.
Is this an omen of pain?
It may just be darkness coming.
But, more than that,
At the source is a manifestation
Collective and dire:
A premonition
Of loss
© HMH, 2018
Lovely imagery and interesting contrasts between the two poems. I must confess, swifts (and swallows) will always be a part of my visions of summer – more in keeping with the first poem. I could never see them as birds of sorrow or grief. I can see how some could see them as such, though. ?
The idea came from a time when I spent a couple of months in Aix-en-Provence. Every evening the swallows would convene in the sky screaming and circulating together. They’d slowly descend until it was nearly dark.
Normally, I also see these birds as presagers of summer. . .
🙂