DRONE SHOW, NEW YORK CITY

by Jennifer Phillips

River in flood, night flocks flickering

among the skyscrapers, down canyoned glass
and concrete tunnels, southing,
all their stars obscured. Even at sunset, brass
reverberation highlighting the ledges,
zigzagging a maze like the airport lighting
flashing along their pattern's edges,
splash of solar panel panes squaring 
off on rooftops, while all the unseen soft bodies
steer, or smack and ricochet to paving,
losing their way, losing their lives.
 
In Central Park, the artist paints the same skies,
that glow with missed comets and  lunar eclipses,
with a flock of drones, loose from their hives,
cruising and folding the black air, like a fizz
of fireflies the news compares to starlings'
wondrous convolutions—of all the ironies—
iron substitutions for the flesh and song and wings
belonging even here, city-center, ground zero
for terrors we make in every size. The crows,
tough and wise, don't migrate much. Sad that we do
not notice, or speak of a murder of swallows.

Jennifer M Phillips is a  bi-national immigrant, painter, gardener, Bonsai-grower. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). A poem is like a little brass pan to carry fire's coals through the winter weather, and so she writes. 

TRUE HOPE IS SWIFT AND FLIES WITH SWALLOW'S WINGS

by Annie Cowell 

Mural with swallows, Kyiv.

At dawn there is a chattering outside;

the swallows have returned—

A clattering percussion after winter’s silence

And I wonder as I watch them 

hurtling like arrows across the sky—

are there swallows shrieking over Kyiv?

Whilst missiles blast the light from Kyiv’s skies

will children spy the swallows darting past;

olive twigs hanging from their beaks?

Will those birds find their nests are broken

and sit instead on the prow of Charon’s boat

to guide the dead to the underworld?

Or rather, as sirens wail in breathless darkness

will the swallows glitter amongst the stars—

souls of the dead heralding the sun?

They say that true hope is swift 

and flies with swallow's wings

‘and light will win over darkness’

Annie Cowell is a former teacher living in Cyprus. She has poems forthcoming in a number of publications. @AnnieCowell3

PAGE FROM A BOOK OF DAYS

by David Chorlton

Swallows at the windswept pond

this morning, quick as good fortune, make the light

sway back and forth above

the water while it keeps

its secrets dark.

                         It’s a quiet time;

Say’s Phoebes barely clear the grass before

returning to the fence from which they came,

and a Loggerhead Shrike moves down

from the desert

with a prayer in his beak.

                                         The Red-tailed Hawk

has made the streets his hunting ground

where the pigeon flock

scatters left, right and skyward

as his shadow scythes between them.

One more day;

                       another step toward

the unknown, with a moodswing peak

to peak along the mountain

as it leans back against the sky. A different

message blows

                         from each direction: another

ten killed in Colorado; the doves

returning early from the tropics; music

on the radio so old

it wouldn’t recognize the world today;

and the voice within, too long

in solitude to know

what its next word should be.

Throughout the pandemic David Chorlton has lived quietly and communicated with the local wildlife. His new book Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle Press features poems that hid in his files for too many years and which now enjoy new exposure.