Swifts

Bing Crosby died in Spain while playing golf with Franco but who could care less, and at this writing only a few of my dear ones are gone—ah I could make a sad list—the swifts, as if to prove a point, fly into the light and make a mockery out of our darkness. They scream for food but in the world of shadows they only make a quick motion; I have studied them—the whiter the wall is—the barer the bulb— the more they scream, the more they dip down. I have made my two hands into a shape and I have darkened the wall to see what it looks like—I have shortened my two broken fingers to make the small tail and twisted the knuckles sideways so when they come in to eat one shadow overtakes the other, that way I can live in the darkness with Franco's poisonous head and Crosby's ears, who fainted, a thousand to one, behind a number two club, though no swift died for him, well, for them, digging for clubs. I watch the birds every night; they fly in a great circle, much larger than what I can see, their dipping is what I dreaded in front of my plain white wall—I say it for the nine hundred Americans who died in Spain. I thought I'd have to wait forever to do them a tiny justice and listen to their songs and die a little from the foolhardy mournful words, flying down one air current or another and doing the sides of buildings and tops of trees, the low-lying straggling dogwood, the full-bodied huge red maple, my dear ones.