The Swans
They all rise in an electric unison
three dozen white swans, heavy-
bellied and necks bulging in
early spring courting.
Mid air, they elude the hum
of a lamp tossed on bed side
at the house down at the end
of the lane. Powerlines stitch
the swatch of field to the brimming
pocket hillside, trembling the air
with the allusion of life down
dirt roads and across town
and the birds, plump with the notion
of one another, are not nimble,
tickled vertically at the pitch,
mutated at the blender’s buzz.
Their wings, broad, beat the
deep humid stink of muddy
tractor rows and feet clamber
to the soft of their stomachs as
they leapfrog, careening against
or with the reverberations of
the football lights
dawning turf at the high school
God: how they leap into the wind drift then all at once
dissolve—nets to the heavens—
into the texture of the trees
like soft white ornaments.
The water again settles into the silty
moats and I’m left at the edge of the field
half-written and land-locked,
feet sown at the threshold of flight.
Maddie Downie is a writer based out of Bellingham, Washington. She writes for Switchback Travel, but her true love is poetry and fiction. Her work can be found in various magazines including Plainsongs and Five on the Fifth. She finds inspiration for her writing in the North Cascade wilderness.