by Jeri McCormick

Considering Swallows

Look quick
to track these roller coaster birds,
propelled by the fork-tailed laws
of speed, their flight a flash-dip
of ascent, descent, as they shear and tack
the thin fabric of air. And though
it’s hard to zero in on their conquests,

picture the target—a mosquito canape
rising from its grass-dense universe,
lifting, drifting to sunlight in slow
fragile ignorance, gliding up. . . up. . .
then instantly down, proboscis and all,
down the swoop-dark throat
of oblivion.

-first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Spring 1999