Counting Swallows

Each evening these extremely happy, enormously talented flyers whirled around overhead snatching mosquitos. Sometime a group of ten to twenty would gather together and swoop just overhead.

I like this quiet corner of Substack where I can create for a small crowd, like singing in a small cafe.

              Counting Swallows

            The birds this evening
                  will not be still.
       They are what joy looks like.
         When their cries fill the air,
              what it sounds like.

   Wheeling across an apricot sky,
  in perfectly audacious maneuvers
even Hercules could not count them.
    They may be swallows or larks,
        perhaps martens or swifts
      but have been a divine thing
              long before names
            and will be long after.