It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
An osprey beats the wind with bowed wings, steady till it drops and shakes in flight. The wind catches and it rises again. I watch from the porch where I’ve come early to stop avoiding our father’s call. Last night, I turned the ringer off then on then off again, swiped down to ignore but texted back. There are two birds in the tree across the street and a third circling and circling, rising and falling in the wind from a distant hurricane. The phone rings. He wants to talk about you. They say each bird attends to just seven others, and, in this way, a thousand starlings turn together like one creature. I’ll try not to make this a metaphor. Once, you and I climbed the hills outside Florence, Italy. Our dearest ones climbed with us and, because we were few and each one loved by all the others, I thought we made a kind of net that might hold the breaking world together. A murmuration of starlings unfurled like the aurora borealis, a sheer curtain caught in wind, twisting, tracing a path through twilight. A hawk swoops low over the osprey nest. I think it might land, but it doesn’t. You ask to meet for coffee. Our father calls, and I don’t answer.
Amy Watkins is the author of the chapbooks Milk & Water, Lucky, and Wolf Daughter. She lives in Orlando with her husband and a large, cuddly, mixed-breed dog.
Applications for the SWWIM + The Betsy residency are open until 8/1. Apply on Submittable!
Are you a SWWIMmer with literary news to share (publication/feature/award/book/book review)? We’d love to shout out your accomplishments in our Weekly Spotlight! Please email swwimmiami@gmail.com. (No DMs on any social media platforms, please.)
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Bluesky for more updates—and visit our website to see past, present, and future readings & events.
**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.
Great poem. So much not said, so much to ponder. Loved it!
This is what poetry is all about... that was lovely.