Swans by Robert Demaree

The swans glide quietly by:
Do they know that turtles
Lurk below the rippled
Brown-green surface?
Does anyone know
What will happen next?
The bench by the pond,
It comes to me now,
Is where we would pause
To rest,
My mother and I,
Easing her wheelchair down the path,
On late spring afternoons at Golden Pines,
Twenty years ago,
Watching other swans.




Robert Demaree, USA