“I’m digressing, sure. But | did you know that to digress means to stray from the flock?” ~ John Murillo, from “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds”

“. . . but did you know the collective noun
for swans is a lamentation? And is a lamentation not

its own species of song?” ~ John Murillo, from “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds”

Tuesday afternoon, sunny and warmer, 77 degrees.

Today Corey and I are supposed to go to Bristol to pick up a baby Nubian goat to add to our herd, a young buck. I hope that he’s as cute as his pictures. He’s only three weeks old, so we’ll need to bottle feed him for another five or six weeks.

Today’s Two for Tuesday has a swan theme. I first featured the James Wright poem ten years ago, so I don’t feel bad about the repeat, especially as it is one of my all-time favorite poems. I love it even more now that I’ve more consistent time around horses.

Enjoy. More later. Peace.

After Whistler

There are girls who should have been swans.
At birth their feathers are burned;
their human skins never fit.
When the other children
line up on the side of the sun,
they will choose the moon,
their precious aberration.
They are the daughters mothers
worry about. All summer,
dressed i gauze, they flicker
inside the shaded house,
drawn to the mirror, where their eyes,
two languid moths, hang dreaming.
It’s winter they wait for, the first snowfall
with the stead interior hum
only they can hear;
they stretch their arms, as if they were wounded,
toward the bandages of snow.
Briefly, the world is theirs
in its perfect frailty.

~ Lisel Mueller

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.