Song

this swan had run herself

into a steel wire web


where streetlights hang above the running path

that drapes around our lake


two girls and their mother

called "animal police" they said


in broken English when I asked

I didn't know the beaks of swans


turned blue for any reason but

this one's neck had broken


gracefully, or the opposite of grace:

she was still alive in silence


opening her mouth for air each time

her head rolled and plopped staccato in the water


her vertebrae no longer formed

that immortal swan shape you would recognize


other birds around her honked

two dragged the blue beak back and forth


mercy looked to us on the sand violent

we tried to shoo them off


her dropping head was every kind of pain

not lessened by the other swans

the late animal police


least by our witness