by Alex Ward

A swan
symbol of peace and beauty
symbol of myth
floating on a deep black pond.
The swan’s blurry,
out of focus,
because it’s a memory
from deepest childhood,
because we’re not allowed to see
peace and beauty clearly.
The days when nothing bad could happen
are gone,
the days when the scare always passed
over and the sunshine
and celebration returned,
the days when I walked the cracked ties
of the railroad track
and the rails were rusted
like the past petrified,
unable to return.
We even
didn’t believe in history,
it seemed false that
anything could’ve existed before the
long summer’s day of the
Seventies,
Winter was hard to believe,
death.
6’3”, my father, who’d fought in the
Korean War, lifted me up
on his shoulders once and I was
dizzy, the ground below 
spun, and I got my first
giddy glimpse of how
far it was possible 
to fall.

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Alex Rainey Ward is a poet, novelist and songwriter. The first poem he ever wrote was for an Arbor Day contest; he won, and with some other children got to plant a tree by the river. He recently became a grandfather.