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[with poems from Heron Clan X]
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Chimney Swifts at the Historic Carolina Coach Garage
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Two now more arrive and flit into the swirl,
swelling hive mind they shift and shape
the wind, counter then clockwise whirl
above old brickwork’s beckoning gape
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left standing here erect as testament,
our conservational intent to leave
some landmark urban respite, benevolent
perhaps, perhaps self-serving; we’ve
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taken advantage of their propulsive drive,
pushed our chairs back from the table
in the court to lean & steal their lives
and freedom open mouthed, rapt, able
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for these few moments until darkness falls
to rise with them, untethered, bold
venture to where the elemental almost calls
but too soon bedtime, now our supper’s cold.
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[For decades this warehouse and shop in Raleigh, North Carolina was a hub of activity servicing Carolina Coach Company buses, in the 1940s the nation’s largest regional bus company.]
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Bill Griffin
from Poems from the Heron Clan Ten, Katherine James Books, Chapel Hill NC. © 2023
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Mom can no longer hear their restless chitterings up the flue on summer evenings. When we sit on the front porch she doesn’t notice their atmospheric ellipsis, punctuating summer afternoons with their aerobatics. She can’t believe they’re calling constantly to each other and to us until I try to mimic that chatter and she laughs. What she most definitely can, though, is wish to see them diving into her chimney at dusk, especially when I tell her I’d seen one do just that last night.
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Revered ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson described Chimney Swifts as little dark cigars with wings. Tapered on the head end and the tail end with sharply tapered wings jutting out mid-fuselage, fluttering so rapidly you’d swear those wingbeats were uncoordinated and asynchronous, well, yes they do look like airborne cigars. Although they often appear in field guide pages adjacent to those other famous aerial foragers, the Swallows, taxonomists place Swifts most closely related to Hummingbirds (based on wing structure). No hovering, though, for these Chimney Swifts – always forward, forward, forward with their loops and barrel rolls. Some species of Swift only alight to lay eggs, spending all the rest of their lives in the air.
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Once you recognize a Chimney Swift’s fricative titter, you’ll realize they’ve accompanied you on hot afternoons and evenings all your life (assuming you live in the Eastern US). Although they winter in Peru, all summer long from the Great Plains to the Atlantic coast Chimney Swifts are widespread and common, probably more common today than they were pre-colonization, when they depended on hollow trees for breeding. These days they sometimes nest by the hundreds in abandoned chimneys, great clouds spiraling in at dusk, perhaps mistaken for bats. You can even buy chimney-like roosting boxes to attract them to your yard to eat the mosquitos.
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After supper, I carry our chairs to the deck for a clean line of sight to the chimney. No smoke has risen from these three pots for decades. Mom and I watch. And watch. The birds circle and tantalize, gyre away, spiral out of earshot then back again so swiftly she misses their brief passage. Keep looking. Don’t blink. Two Swifts buzz the opening but then pull up in a high-G climb. Sky darkens. Dusk wants to coalesce around us, trundle us back indoors. Suddenly one little bird at full throttle blips straight down into the chimney. Then another. It’s become too dark to count the rest, but when we return to the couch beside the fireplace we hear the nestling together of a congenial company who’ll rest here with us until first light.
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Doug Stuber, Ed Lyons, and Richard Smyth Ph.D. hatched the idea for Poems from the Heron Clan in Rochester, New York in 1998. After Doug returned in 2015 from a seven-year professorship in South Korea, the anthology has been published every year. Not only does Volume Ten encompass a wide geography – poets from five continents, poets from Turkey, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Montenegro, and a dozen other countries – it also embraces a lavish geography of style and theme. The editors explicitly state: “We aim to represent well-established poets and emerging writers, young and mature poets, and poets of color.”
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And North Carolina. NC poets populate these pages abundantly. JS Absher, Glenn Cassidy, Earl Huband, Shelby Stephenson, Steve Cushman, Anna Dallara, the three founders themselves – if you live in the South and read poetry, you’ll recognize these voices accompanying you all summer, all seasons. I’m drawn to all of the Carolina poetry in this volume and tempted to sample each one in this post. Alas, perhaps you’ll just have to purchase a copy. Meanwhile, here are Priscilla Webster-Williams, Preston Martin, and Bradley Strahan from Heron Clan X.
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Morton Salt
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Under a purple umbrella, a girl in a yellow raincoat
carries a box of salt, the cover art singing out
When It Rains It Pours. I studied the dark blue carton
that lived on the kitchen table, the Morton Salt Girl
smiling with each shake of the cylinder.
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Morton, my father, toured with the big bands,
playing what he called Mickey Mouse Music,
tunes too tame for one who’d grown up crating
spicy Chicago jazz with Red Nichols and Jimmy Dorsey.
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Morton met Jean, my mom-to-be, at the Nicollet,
where she was hostess of the grand dining room:
Grant Wood murals, double white linens,
real silver silverware, and a stage
for the musicians and the act.
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Morton must have winked at Jean
from behind his golden trombone,
the vocalist crooning I’ll be seeing you
in all the old familiar places.
He must have whispered some kind of proposal
as they floated like movie stars across the dance floor.
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When I was six, Mother shredded my Father’s photo,
set her stoic Midwestern jaw, and never spoke
of him again. She didn’t need to, his features etched
on my face like the grooves in one of his Bluebird records,
the same strawberry-blond hair appearing in my mirror.
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Each day, I gazed at his name on that dark blue box
stamped with the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,
and over time, Morton, my founding father,
became a pillar of salt.
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Priscilla Webster-Williams
from Poems from the Heron Clan Ten, Katherine James Books, Chapel Hill NC. © 2023
originally published in The Narrative Possibilities of Coral, Main Street Rag Publishing, Charlotte NC. © 2017
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Elegy, Gloria Died in Eden
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She took the well-traveled road
two nights ago.
No more tractoring up the back hills
or brush cutting lower fields,
or using her Daddy’s walking stick
++++ down beside the creek –
or oiling the mower or
penciling in the Reds box score,
or sipping an evening sweet wine
on the porch
++++ as nightly geese call down,
close overhead, descending to the reservoir.
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She noted in her diary the day the flew on south.
And who will shoot the coyotes now?
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Preston Martin
from Poems from the Heron Clan Ten, Katherine James Books, Chapel Hill NC. © 2023
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Empty Places
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In the end we are all archaeologists,
sifting through the ruins of existence
to find shards of pottery
inscribed in a strange tongue:
a letter from a friend left on a picnic table
a poem written on the back of a menu,
the sketch of a girl whose name you can‘t recall,
a yellowed photograph with stranger’s eyes.
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We keep on struggling with left over pieces
from a childhood puzzle, trying to fill the gaps
left my smiling lips missing from a face,
tears frozen on eyeless cheeks,
fingers absent from an outstretched hand.
But somehow cannot fill the empty place
and the dark comes creeping in.
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Bradley Strahan
from Poems from the Heron Clan Ten, Katherine James Books, Chapel Hill NC. © 2023
from Poems from the Heron Clan Ten, Katherine James Books, Chapel Hill NC. © 2023
originally published in Gargoyle
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The editors of Poems from the Heron Clan invite you to buy a copy, explore their previous issues at their BLOG, and consider submitting three poems and a 50-word bio to:
katherinejamesbooks@gmail.com
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Oh the beautiful Toad! and to further the love for Swifts, check out “The Screaming Sky” by Charles Foster
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Thanks, Jenny! At this time of year on the Elkin Forest Bathing Trail, the newly metamorphosed toads, smaller than a cricket, are moving from the lake up into the woods. Dozens and dozens cross the trail as you walk! —B
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I love to watch swifts and bats acrobatics.
Strahan’s empty places could be about my sifting through a jumble of memories, tossed and tumbled bt time, letting the hurts fall through, while keeping the shiny things.
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Thanks, Les, for a beautiful image of our daily tumble with memory. —B
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