When I remember how we began, love,
I picture the white-throated swift
born of craggy canyons out west
aerialist acrobat
who eats, drinks, courts
even mates
in dizzying flight:
Two swifts meet on high
link in an avian embrace
and plummet in one
feather-light tumble
as the green valley
hurtles close
then the birds unclasp
and catch themselves
on scimitar wings
righting their bodies mid-air.
Love, we are not devil-may-care
but the earth fell away
when we first touched.
I’m still plunging the vaulted blue.
Wendy Kagan writes in a converted barn in the Catskill Mountain foothills, preferably with a cup of creamy British tea in front of a roaring wood stove. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Eunoia Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Blood Moon Aria was long-listed for the Yellow Arrow Publishing 2024 chapbook competition and is forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks. More at wendykagan.com.