National Poetry Month.

Holy Tuesday.

COVID-19.

Social Distancing.

Kinda writes itself, doesn’t it?

Nah, we can do better. Instead, here’s a glorious piece by everyone’s favourite poet, Mary Oliver, God rest her. In this poem, she uses the ever-changing image of a swan to indicate the changes life imposes, coaxes, and expects from us. Who will we become as we drift and swim and soar through its days?

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The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –

A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?