Spring's swift arrival?

Lat year we went from snow covered trees and ground in mid-April to open water full of waterfowl in late April. Today moderate numbers of geese were observed looking silly walking on the ice at Carlos Avery. Large flocks of geese were seen headed north. Male redwing blackbirds are perched on the cattail reeds. Many more robins are flitting through the underbrush. Not yet seen but heard are sand hill cranes and turkeys gobbling. All that's missing is open water (and melting the ice covering my driveway). Soon the woods should look like this:

ferns sprouting in Spring  © harrington

And yards will start to look like this:

day lilies growing leaves    © harrington

I'm starting to find it a pleasant change to be able to write about what's here this Spring as well as what's still to come. I bet you feel the same. Anne Stevenson knows how long it can seem until full-fledged Spring finally arrives.

Swifts

By Anne Stevenson 

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.

The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.

But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child

You shout, 'The swifts are back!'

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther

Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.

Swereee swereee. Another. And another.

It's the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.

These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.

But a shift of wing, and they're earth-skimmers, daggers

Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for

Earth is forbidden to them, water's forbidden to them,

All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,

They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —

When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,

The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things

Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.

And they stayed there. 'Well,' said the Raven, after years of this,

'I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky

On condition that you give up rest.'

'Yes, yes,' screamed the swifts, 'We abhor rest.

We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,

Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.

Let us be free, be air!'

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.

He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.

He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.

Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so

We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but

Bolts in the world's need: swift

Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world's breathing.

The grace to say they live in another firmament.

A way to say the miracle will not occur,

And watch the miracle.

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