Back to Hearth

Every spring, come the swallows

A new home hearth put in repair

A new brood to send off; and swoop

And trapeze in the thick torrid air,

And rescue gnats from the wrath

Of vacationers. A graceful duo,

Now on the wire, now on the clay nest

Tweet-chit-flutter, two collude and collide

To kill off generations of the insect type,

And push them down the throat of weak chicks.

They fret and flutter at such a speed,

And chatter in between, with beaks noisy

And clicks and natters, raising the rafters,

With tricks and swirls and whirls on wings

Cursive loops and coded calls un-ciphered

In constant quest for a crooked flight path

They appear so married, coupled, tandem,

So busy-ied with their young—the needy—

As harried as flustered with full housekeeping

It’s difficult to place them in the primal, early

Moment of origin—the creation moment,

Secret wings, a slit tongue, a smooth body designed,

Two of the same, completing each other,

Until fledging flight takes them awash overland.

Two shallows with no clue, no knack

For sadness—not that they give any hint—

In tailored black, dressed in tuxedo chic,

Do not rest, spend no moments saddened

Forth one scissors off, the other back zigzags,

On the nest they both take turns perched

Or on a branch nearby one parked up

To hone in on bee or cicada, or fly off.

No time they have for moribund song,

As distills the dusk, they flicker and dart,

The hot summer days are long, but not as long

As the day before. Dark comes a bit earlier

Quicker, as soon the season will be wrong.

They bicker and knack, and cross, and fluster,

Like me and you. They learn never.

And they return, every next summer.