scarecrow poetics/essays

The swans drink in the sunlight
then retreat to the patches of shade
by the light
rippling on the water.

Small children run
into the quilts of light,
and cannot see the graceful creatures.

Up, up, up, they ask their mothers
to lift them
above the light.

Light like the silver oars
from ancient
golden boats.

Light dividing the day
marking the inevitable retreat of swans
and children
from their mothers’ arms.

Lisa Williams © 2006.

Lisa Williams is a Professor of Literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and lives in New York City. She is the author of Letters to Virginia Woolf and also The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf.

See this interview at RSB and this Scarecrow review.