The Swan's Song

Seriously, I am not vain, but if I were, I’d say Mary Oliver wrote this poem for me. Or maybe about me.

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

That’s me, that’s my black beak. I bite the air, or sometimes just take a little nip of it. It tastes so good, so free, with its flavor of transparency. Some days the air tastes a little bit like it’s too raw, but that doesn’t lessen my appetite. Notice how in my poem the air kind of swaddles me, allowing me to become flowers, allowing my feathers to flow. The air tastes like nothing, or rather like everything. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to burst. Make me your bouquet of white, tie me to you with silk or linen, or both, silk AND linen. Notice that I wouldn’t seem so much like lilies and snow if the river weren’t so dark. If you don’t think a swan can be clothed in those things, you haven’t been watching closely enough. I’m happy to work with you on this, help you see the importance of shapeshifting as I know it. Once you’ve mastered that, you too can find air to your liking. 

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

The river is black, my beak is black, and black is an immensely beautiful thing. Not a color, because black is the absence of all color, of all light. Not a color, but a space and a meaning. My song is dark and when I want, I can send it hurtling down over rock layers so that it turns into a cascade of… of… of… anything with wings. Yes, that’s it. My music is tied to my throat, but my black beak brings it forth and it becomes what it was always meant to be. A shrill knife - yes, knives have sounds they make if you listen - that separates one side of breathing from the other. I sing that difference, that momentary clash when flutes and whistles are at their shrillest. Maybe at that moment you wish I would stop, and I do, because you are watching. 

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –

A white cross 

Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings 

Like the stretching light of the river?

You might be thinking now that I am not shaped like a cross and that might well be true. Perhaps the cross shape refers to my music? Remember, we’ve been looking at and thinking about a river and rain and cascades. Crosses don’t have the ability to stream, but I do. And if my singing doesn’t exist without me, then maybe you should just take that “it” in this part of the poem and make “it” be anything you want. Shape it, shape me, to fit your moment. That could be harder than people think. Some just want to see a white bird floating on water, but I’m not going to be that bird for them. They would be far happier if they let me fly free, let me be the river and its light, let me stretch both of us as far as possible. Both of us, and you as well, if you wish. After all, we look with what we are taught, but we also look with what we have learned. Teaching is fine, but where do we go from there Where do we go after first grade and after we’ve seen our first swan?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Yes, that is the big question: Did you see how that first swan pertained to everything? How it wrote all over and through everything you learned after that? Did you notice your heart was turning? Or are you somebody who saw only black and white, only a painted bird without its silk and linen? Nothing to bind you to it or to anything else? (Note: To bind is not to restrict, not here, not to me. But we’ll come back to this. Just watch out for all the threads.)

A swan - like me - is all black, all white, all black, all white. Dark, black, white, black. Silvery in its response to what surrounds it. Calling to and called by nature. Where does one end and the other begin? Who belongs to whom? Do your surroundings breathe light and dark, too? I hope so, for your sake. You cannot forget - I don’t want you to forget - I, we, all of us swans, shift and sing and reshape. We are change at its finest. We move in and out of your field of vision, move off, move back, our silkiness slides over you and you are no longer the same because you have us. You have the beauty of your eyes and you feel in your heart that we, I, swans in general, may never let you go. That is, if you have finally figured “it” out…

Swan. Define swan now, if you will. This is certainly not a lesson in how to use the dictionary, which would be less than poetic. The bird itself really doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with it so it is not just a still life on a still river. Life is not meant to be etched in stone, in definitions, on indelible marks of pages of books. If you are reading this, then you too are shapeshifting, you know where we’re heading with all of this. You are watching how I use myself as a mark on your page, on your pages. Maybe white ink on white paper sounds redundant or impossible to read, but that will change. Everything we know shifts from dark to light to dark, endlessly. Wait a little and white will no longer disappear on or in you. It will become what you need so you can see.

I am happiest when weaving myself into the air and singing and biting. I am happiest when shifting my shape to fit the rain, so I can be rain. I am happiest when I am becoming an extension of the river, becoming the stretching light or being stretched by light. In and out. Upward and down. It is all the same thing, but remember - it changes. You will know what this means, if you answer the question Mary Oliver asks at the beginning of her - my - poem: Did you too see it?

If you have learned to watch well since you finished first grade, I suspect you will have no trouble feeling the weaving, the movement, the togetherness of everything. Of thinking like me, like a swan. You have seen and realized. Everything is being, everything is, because of every other thing. One whole, moving parts. Change standing still. Stillness becoming change. I don’t think I can make this much clearer. Stop, and you will never stand still.

We are not allowed to watch and then do nothing. That seems to be the poet’s point of view, and she seems to have given it a lot of thought before putting me on the page. Have you changed your life? The only way you CAN do that is by standing still and seeing, reading a swan on the water, listening to waterfalls of words, watching the world as it braids itself and us into shapes never known before. 

Only when you do this can you be sure if you’ve changed your life. Someone might also ask you about this. Don’t doubt me. You will be asked. There’s just one thing to keep in mind: This changing your life thing. Is it a mere question - have you changed your life? - or is it an imperative? Because change you should. We should all change. 

*** 

Now that I’ve been thinking about Oliver’s poem, I know the truth about myself: I am a swan. A real live swan. Just as I told you earlier. If being a swan means having these different forms, some cloaked in darkness, some in light, then I am telling you I’m a swan. If I were a human, you might think I’m a bit odd, but seeing as I’m not, I think it’s all right that I’ve told you. I trust you to do the right thing.

If you’re shaking your head and thinking swans don’t talk, then you haven't been paying attention. What does it mean to talk? Is it only a matter of using words to know what’s real, to define the world around us? Did you really just want to sketch in black on white and make something that’s masked as a swan? (Or a cardinal or a bunting.) 

Please don’t misinterpret this. I know black and white really well. I like to draw with black and white, I am black and white and rain and light and river and ledges. You are welcome to add any other colors of your choosing, because you and I both knows we can write with those as well. Please remember that I am change and after our conversation I am you as well. You are what you see, and I hope you saw the morning, the white blossoms, the cross, everything that was there for you, as if somebody - me, perhaps - had set a table and you were invited. 

By now I have either made my point and you and I are on the same page, or you are nodding off with boredom. You may have tried to dismiss me as the talking duck in a children’s story. You may have said the poem is just a few pretty lines about a bird in the river. I love the river near my place. I make a lot of gestures with what are supposed to be my hands and arms. However, my limbs feel like wings, so they’re probably wings. Plus, when I move them I can feel how I separate the air, how I cut it, when I move around my place. 

And that’s also what swans are about, what poetry is about, what you are about. Everything is about the place we are in, where we anchor, our point of departure for flying into the world and returning again. We shift and swerve, dip and soar, caw and sing. We are always in the barrel of change called life.