ARTFUL DODGERS

This is the second of two poems on the same theme:

 

ARTFUL DODGERS 

That vanishing trick of swallows
and then their “Abracadabra
we’re back!”
baffled us down the ages. 

Each summer, all summer long,
they dare-devil low and fast
over the lakes and fields;
then they’re gone. 

Who would imagine these feathered darts,
these off-cuts of cloud,
could fly away farther than Man had travelled
to lands undreamt of?

Hibernation however: that filled the gap,
that explanation appealed –
even the theory, daft as a duck,
that swallows wintered in the mud of ponds. 

Why would these sparks of sun and air,
free as the angels,
sink to the half-lit, slow-moving, medium
of fish?

But, as we know, the human mind
– whooping and wheeling –
has always flown, fast and low,
over the facts and lacunae.

© John Stevens

 

You can read the first of these two poems at:
https://johnlooker.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/secret-commands/  

Photograph: ‘Deciphering’ by Hannah Stoney, reproduced with permission from her website at http://thethinks.com/ 

There is also an exquisite painting of birds in flight over a winter landscape on the ExtraSimile blog. Take a look, at http://extrasimile.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/untitled-8/