Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The swans are freshening feathers -
they adjust the fastenings
of fretted quills and puff
the down beneath their breasts.
He clips his helmet strap -
impatiently they strut and flap.

He knows they’ll wait - instinctively
they trust a mother’s sheltering wings.
The engine fires and putters sweetly -
air is quivering cool across his cheeks -
the ground abandons him
he’s thrust upon the rising wind.

A group of farmers shade their eyes
in disbelief - say - does that guy
have strings to keep those swans in line.
Another feels there’s menace in the air -
remember Hitchcock’s film - The Birds -
it looks just like they’re chasing him.

He sees the silver tentacles
of Chesapeake that still reflect
a flood of drowning glaciers.
The Indians knew it was a pearl
of estuaries - the Spaniards came
with guns and germs to bring their Christ.

Then Raleigh’s crew that followed them
were next in that relentless force
that spanned an ocean, trawled a continent.
They set their cities to be jewels
in the crown of man’s endeavour -
Baltimore, Annapolis.

He sets a course across the bay.
Vehicles move along the highways -
restless beetles glinting in the sun.
Skip jacks skim like water insects -
dredging scraps of succulence -
blue crabs and oysters - his mouth

is watering. The swans fly on
impassively as oce they flew
above the guns. How could they know -
those pretty girls - they never heard
the thud or splash - or saw the feathers
marked with blood

that fed their charming vanity.
And those industrious clerks
and scholars never hurt a fly.
Should they have paused to think
of drooping necks and clouded eyes?
The swans were silenced but a dream

was kept alive - and here they come
towards the eastern shore - so flat -
indented with a thousand creeks
and inlets. Can he find the place?
He sees the signals - touches ground.
Swans close their wings but his

surround him still expanded like
a spreading cloak. A swan comes over -
nuzzles sharply at his jacket hem.
He shouts with pain and joy -
slips from his wings and hears again -
again - the trumpeters resound.