2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College
2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College
2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College
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Swan Song for My Mother<br />
by Ursula Moeller<br />
All day every day<br />
these last two years<br />
I carried you with me.<br />
I carried you along on my riverside walk<br />
passing downy ducklings, cottony cattails,<br />
spatterdock, starry waterlilies<br />
white pointed petals bursting skyward,<br />
glimpsed a wild Trumpeter Swan<br />
heard him calling<br />
like the black swan<br />
at your retirement home.<br />
You said the swan knew you, remember<br />
I pushed your wheelchair<br />
right up to the fence.<br />
Broad red feet paddled him<br />
and his wavering mirror image<br />
as close as he could get.<br />
The swan nodded<br />
his scarlet knobbed beak<br />
spread wide those<br />
great glossy wings<br />
ruby-red eyes gleaming, and yes,<br />
when you spoke to him<br />
in both German and English<br />
in the soft voice you used<br />
talking to small children,<br />
he swayed his sinuous neck,<br />
sang his sonorous song.<br />
Clearly you understood each other.<br />
I stood silent behind you<br />
<strong>Santa</strong> <strong>Fe</strong> Literary Review 133
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