Swans at a Pond by JFK Airport

.

…….resemble cranes,
the construction kind; one of the pair has begun to assemble

…….a nest as big
as a sleeping adult human being. No rest

…….accrues to the
weary, if the weary are or expect to be parents; but no blues,

…….no keening, no
jeremiads are in order, just advice they won’t hear: take it slow;

…….try, at least, to
make plans you won’t have to keep: you, too, will cry.

…….Futurity
appears here as several bits of mess: split sticks, dull loot

…….our trenches leave,
prismatic drinking straws, and bottlenecks belie the merely emotional power

…….source that some of
us find in recycling, as if we could rescue a watershed by collating apple cores,

…….as if goodness
were easy to recognize, and the distinction of eros from caritas

…….elementary.
O swans, mute, self-appointed landed gentry

…….whose work confines
itself to the under-studied and overlooked, further reports would only confuse

…….us who travel
in such exhausting, overbearing vehicles, and make ourselves ridiculous

…….thereby. It is
not we who own the air.