Giving Up

Grateful acknowledgment is made to yefief (NM) which first published this poem.

from the collection THIS WAY OUT

Giving Up

As I walk freezing out to skate

Two swans are flying midnight to the lake

Over the hill behind my home

Where the ice is always smooth as moonlight.

They are sitting in white silence
Huddled in the center of a figure eight
Staring off into the clouds of snow along the shore
Perhaps remembering the water and the waves.

I want to skate to show them how
We must glide over what’s frozen by hard winters
And trust the weather to follow us
Wide open to whatever we believe.

Pecking the ice they chip their bills
Then snap their necks down flat—
But this wild dive for food
Leaves them limp and slowly turning gray.

The lake expands to take them back
Feathers sinking and the figure eight
Breaks lose repeating circles
Cross each other like two signals of escape.

I race out angry as the face of the moon
Ripples over this choppy ice
And with my palm I sweep away the frost—
Their wings and silver eyes are open wide
Two black swans, frozen in a glass sky.

R Bartkowech