Flight School

This year's barn swallows come down from the eves

Photo by Maddy Weiss on Unsplash

When I first moved to the island, I did everything I could to dissuade the barn swallows from nesting on the house. I swore at them, played loud music, sprayed the hose on the “jet” setting in the general direction of their mid-air swoops. At one point, I managed to spray down a nest in progress. But that made me feel worse. The barn swallows came back and built a second nest a few feet away from where I had demolished the first one. Their perseverance humbled me.

Now in May, when I spot the first returning swallows flying by the house to scout out the best real estate, I smile. By the middle of June, the hatchlings arrive, and only a few days later are large enough to beg loudly for food at 4:30 in the morning. I sleep with the window open so I can listen to them cry out for the opportunity to live. Some days I’m not sure I want the opportunity myself, but then I find the other ones—fallen, stolen, hunted, abandoned. The owls are hungry and my home’s windows are deceiving. I don’t know what is fair or not. But I can root for the swallows born on the eves. Which I do, when they drop down, huddle in a group on the deck’s railing, and take their first awkward flight toward the dark spaces of the canopy just beyond.

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Flight School

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This year's barn swallows come down
from the eves, land first on the railing, hesitate.
Downy-necked and plump, the fledglings 
open wide their beaks, waiting for what 
they have known to still come easy.

These beasts are the lucky ones.
Yesterday unveiled a stiff, grounded goldfinch.
The day before a scatter of blue, shattered eggs
dusting the trail's carpet like broken bits of sky.

I could continue counting backwards
to sum up the losses which will surely go on.
I could blame the sheen of the windows,
non-native owls, the cellular disturbance.

But the juveniles are perched on the rail.
One unfolds its angel bones, leaps.
Then another, and another. And they go.
And I want to learn everything they know.

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Thank you for reading.

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