At Lakeside

By Melissa Kalinowski

If I were to tell you about the nest

a pair of tree swallows leave, in turn,

as high-speed flashes of light

veering, swooping, capturing flies for their brood—

I’ll tell you about last Fall

when another bird discovered the lakeside willow,

drilled through bark into sapwood, made a roost

so warm, so snug before the snowstorms came, and lucky

for the swallows, the roots up through the trunk withstood them

while the neighboring tree, dying, fell down

onto the ice till buried in the spring thaw

and there its sunken branches sheltered a fish nursery

visited by herons and egrets utterly absorbed in

seizing the flow of silver;

and if I were to go on about the happenings,

the ways that ease the lives of others—surprises,

then out of wonder, tell me,

would you ask me to take you there?

Subscribe to the Poetry Hive Newsletter