Swans L Poem by Morgan Michaels

Unruffled, they sailed the seas
their wings set proudly back on racks of air
stiffly but fluently, blown by the breeze
quasi-mechanically
showing all the world no care;
or like a canon with twin, similar themes
that ether-tread the air on one another's
scruffled moccasins, like brothers
heel, in file, shore to shore.

Now back and forth, they swing
placid, in my mind, drawing dreams on dream
ribbons and spider-tethers wound in their bills-
sole and only labor due them:
freer than ducks at carnivals
although they never sing
for that would mean that death's come, so they go
drifting mutely, studying their faces in the quick
dipping a dripping head below

in liquid jade.
I recall one sorry soul
council insinserity,
I so young, by riverside: vessels of treachery
that haul unwary children down
to walk the murky bottoming and drown
like Gulliver bound up
in sodden reed to helpless fixity-
yet, of treachery they seemed to me

Guiltless....