The Swan
Bruised
wings and battered bones
Know better the
efficacy of time
Nestled snugly
in the shattered rushes
Shivering at
the advancing autumn,
Its
encroaching chill, the unrelenting
Certainty of
fate--- hollow consolation.
Dull flesh
resigns the night
Each breeze
bringing its tempest of leaves
---a
swirling, visualized symphony
Of color and
shape.
Each
November tear knows the bitterest truth;
Each chill
sunset hides a different law
Of an earth
groaning; of a world unwinding
In slow entropy.
Eyelids
flutter, seeking desperate respite,
She draws in
her slender neck against the chill,
Still graceful
as the unfurling fronds of bracken,
Even in
defeat.
Glittering sunlight
fades from the surface of the water
As the pale
Hunter’s moon rises to survey its shadowy domain.
Wakeful nightbirds
twitter from the fringes their callous frivolities.
Trembling
still,
The watchful
eye,
Scanning, at
last, the dark expanse,
---exhaustion
trumping vigilance.
She shivers
one
Or twice
And draws to
close her weary eyes in sleep
Or more,
perhaps to dream
Of latter
days upon the wing.
