Liar Bird

It looks peaceful enough,
But you know the trouble I've had with swans.

The water looks sleepy, if malarial
And the clouds drape themselves, laundered white and blameless
Over her placid face
In reflection.

One mustn't flinch
At tea.
One mustn't let things slither from one's sockets
While perched stiffly at sofa's edge
Discussing the weather.

I was a mother once myself
For a few minutes.
It was long enough for my heart to slip, like ink from a pen,
Scratched by another hand onto a page I can never retrieve.

Do you see my child
Rolling up from nightmares to bob, gray and sloughing,
Choked in the crook of the swan's white nanny-wing?

I do,
And I cannot bear it.

But let's walk down by the pond just the same.
You can ask me if I'm cold,
While winding yourself nervously in a cardigan.
We can chatter,
And flit across the surface like jesus bugs.

It looks peaceful enough,
This going on with things;
But each solstice,
When I elude the upstanding rotten knot of those who love me,
I am found naked--
Bloody from breasts to thighs,
Snapping the bones of the liar bird
Who stepped up on the bank to preen.
_______

photograph by Margaret Bednar.  

for Real Toads photo challenge.