The Swan
Robert Creeley
Peculiar that swan should mean a sound?
I'd thought of gods and power, and wounds.
But here in the curious quiet this one has settled down.
All day the barking dogs were kept at bay.
Better than dogs, a single swan, they say,
will keep all such malignant force away
and so preserve a calm, make pond a swelling lake--
sound through the silent grove a shattering spate
of resonances, jarring the mind awake.
The 2River View, 2_2 (Winter 1997)
