The Angry Swan**

The Angry Swan

 

Sometimes you don’t know exactly what you’re dealing with �"

Like the time I was standing on the G.V. Barbee Bridge,

Watching the pleasure boats move up the channel.

 

It was during the days of my bitter acquiescence

When I thought I might be going blind

And had become a difficult person

For me to be around,

Or to care about,

As caring goes.

 

So, I wasn’t feeling much of anything,

Except wary about the groaning of the bridge

And suspicious of the traffic that was causing it to suffer;

And then I noticed what I thought was an egret,

Stepping inside its glimmering reflection

And airing out its wings �"

 

But slowly catching on, and thinking he was odd �"

Not an egret or a heron, but something strange

And more appealing than any creature

I have in ever beheld.

 

And yet I was still not caring much,

Being hung up on how its long, white feathers

Were messing with my eyes and egging on a headache �"

 

But it was that day I learned

That I was not going blind �"

But growing old.

 

For I so hated Nature’s face that I glared at it

The way it glared at me, swelling like an angry swan

And trembling in the shallows without resonance or meaning.

 

A Recollection of Gradually Recognized Grace

 

-An Explanation of the Bird Beneath the Bridge Story-

 

I thought I should say something about “The Angry Swan” because the reader may regard this poem as that of a fabulist or even a mental case. - And in that regard, it is comparable to many of the things I wrote in adolescence and virtually everything I wrote a few weeks prior to my emotional collapse in November of 1970.[1]

 

This is to say,

 

That I can offer only what may be viewed

As an apocryphal story about its origin.

 

I had been progressively losing my vision for several weeks and had never thought to see a physician, as I am fatalistic about life in the physical realm, and I am regularly opposed to giving doctors the upper hand regarding my health. But it was that day on the bridge that I embraced the possibility that my vision could be corrected, and a few weeks later, I underwent laser surgery. The anesthesia had limited effect on me, and I made several comments about my “bridge experience” to the surgeon during the operation.

 

As I watched the first of my cataracts explode

Into many meaningless pieces of temporal debris,

 I was still pondering that mysterious bird, 

And the sometimes-painful appearance of grace.

And the sometimes-painful appearance of grace