Swallows

Green breast, yellow crest,

blue wing, black beak,

morning light, morning colors,

shimmer bright, zipline drive,

bird dives, 900 tries,

in twelve hours,

summer hours,

tendrilled sweat of days.

Jellybean orbed water drops

catch  in spider nets in gamma grass.

Independence Day observed rises as

a day like any other,

a morning burdened with dew.

A dying sun burns off.

Blind sun, with fiery fingers,

touches every blade of grass,

every antler of a cricket

whispers,  what is this?

It’s the same blue sky,

same bird flying high

whether we’re in jail  

in a house, in a school

on the ripples of a pond.

Dragonflies insist

I am no slave, there is no master

(but the ones we make of mud and disaster).

It’s Independence Day today.

Sunflower stalks  host orgies of ladybugs

who tear apart aphids

suckling at a watery leaf

that stretches out its palm to fingers of sun above

generates chlorophyll of our veins

the waterfall that runs from crown

out the very soles of feet

that crush the grass

press in the soil a mark

a sign of what was there and what will come.

Lurch the engine in reverse, give it gas,  

slide to drive, inch forward among the rippled ponds of  

circling swallows in air above.

Another hot morning.

They’ve been diving for hours.  

They will dive for hours.

We drive for an hour.

We snatch a strong second,  

centuried moments of watching.

Swallows encircle

each neighborhood soul.

This is no Independence Day, like any other.

We’ve found our masters:

elliptic miracle of swallows

a staggered stupor of a sun

the fainted grasses that lay drying

in bitter heat that grows.  

—Emily Romano