Leda, After the Swan

by Carl Phillips

Perhaps,

in the exaggerated grace

of his weight

settling,

the wings

raised, held in

strike-or-embrace

position,

I recognized

something more

than swan, I can't say.

There was just

this barely defined

shoulder, whose feathers

came away in my hands,

and the bit of world

left beyond it, coming down

to the heat-crippled field,

ravens the precise color of

sorrow in good light, neither

black nor blue, like fallen

stitches upon it,

and the hour forever,

it seemed, half-stepping

its way elsewhere--

then

everything, I

remember, began

happening more quickly.

From In the Blood by Carl Phillips, published by Northeastern University Press. Copyright © 1992