Aloft, alight, ablaze the bloom
burns against the blue abyss:
frail filigree of mortal foam,
a breaking wave on Heaven’s shore.
A grateful eye could ask no more —
yet higher, brighter still than this
long skeins of swans in glory pass,
and curl like smoke and form again,
and heliograph their messages
like petals on a sunlit wind.
But never falling to the grass,
they call — they sail past — they’re gone…
and in their going somehow take
the breath away, and somehow make
the caged heart beat
its wings — and ache.
© 2018 D A Clarke
