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

 

(Explaining 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 - 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 psychological and 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 little 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.

---

[1] Paris’s emotional collapse came with the year’s first snowfall. He was walking home after viewing a movie version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace when he suddenly became fearful of the snowflakes that seemed to be growing in size and weight as they fell on his head and shoulders. He panicked and fled desperately into the storm, only to give up a short time later, concluding that surrender was better than a life on the run. He immediately sought professional help and was hospitalized for nearly two months.