Poems by Amy Glynn

Behaviors of White-Throated Swifts

by Amy Glynn

From Canary Spring 2019

Amy grew up in a valley between Las Trampas Ridge and Mount Diablo in the Walnut Creek watershed.

1. Chase without Contact

Sure, you can call me
Fast if it makes you feel
Better. Say it
As if it were a bad thing, as if
It weren’t part
Of the attraction.

It’s all right. Thrill
And insult live cheek by jowl
In this field. No ill-will,
No hard feelings. In these urban canyons’ Relentless
gray,
Even a black and white bird stands Out as a
slash of color, and the color
Is speed, is swiftness.

You can call me what you like, look at the dashing
Figure I cut across these rooftops, call me
Metonymic; mimic
Me. Call me mimetic, call
Me trouble, call me what
You call what’s just beyond your reach, your fleet
Wings’ each beat – keep calling Across the
shrilling sky. I’m willing to listen.

Call me fast
And never stop calling.
Follow me, we are
Born for this, all-supple, all
Subtle, supremely responsive, rising
Into mist, into a metaphyisics only we
Can understand, alas, Alacrity, but
how
Can you miss me
If I never go away?

2. Screaming Party

Odd birds. Nobody knows precisely why
We do these things. We only know that there Are
impulses, and there are rules. We fly
In flocks, big ones, a thousand sometimes, air
Made solid, air made feathered, air made noise,
Made boisterous laughter. Slowing down is not An
option. Yet one certainly enjoys
This fractal billowing, the social knot;
One’s lifted up by kinship. Foraging
Alone is not enough. A critical mass
Of aeronauts, of extroverts, we sing
Badly, but with exuberance, a brass
Ensemble with one mind and infinite
Voices. The sky is vast. We speak for it.

3. Chase with Contact

Think fast. Think, think. Think speed, think elegant
Acceleration. Think ascension, think Celerity,
think feathered bullet, sent
From somewhere into somewhere. Who’s content
To settle, to give love unearned? Don’t blink

Or you might miss me. Oh, I’m fast all right,
You think you’ve got me: think again. Think no
Rest for the wicked. This could be a fight
For primacy, or a flirtation. Might
Be both. In either case, though, we both know

We’re thinking the same thing. The nip, the nape,
The aerial tumble and the rush of air
Our lives are. There’s a predetermined shape
To it: now I am yours. Now I escape.
It isn’t you, it’s me. It’s us. Not fair,

But there it is. No one can fly entwined
For long. We are committed to our speed.
We move fast and think faster. Never mind
What doesn’t matter. Think about it: find
Yourself in seeking me. Find what you need.

4. Courtship Fall

The slowest thing we ever do is fall. The
terminal velocity we’re sentenced to, the
pure celestial celerity, means everything –
sex, sleep – must happen on the wing.

How likeably alike we are, how elegantly
limned: the sailplane wing, the bright-white
bar flashing, the deftly slimmed cylinder of
the breast (cigare volant), all engineered for
far-

fetched speeds. They say if you don’t stand for
something, you will fall for anything. But we,
who land seldom, and not at all if we can help
it, comprehend
things differently. What’s at the end

of five hundred vertical feet? Not just the
ground. Abandoning volition is a kind of
trust we’re built for. Anything worth doing
is worth doing right. Forget the world: fall.
Forget flight:

fall. This is passion. Ekstasis.
Absorption. We’re beside ourselves.
Axis, mirror, the bliss of parity, the
wide sky falling ever upward. We are
one bird, one identity.

But earth impends. It always does. Part
of the thrill to know that we must
separate. It was, dear mate, great, if not
slow, still thrilling to the quick, a trick
of Tantra, and arithmetic.

5. Silent Dread.

The funny thing is, the collective squawk, the
addled flapping, all the loopiest maneuvers we
perform, seem for the world like mass hysteria.
We are a shock of noise, a panic button of
unfurled
flight feathers. In this state, who’d see the jessed

hawk’s shadow cutting closer? Who would know real
danger from imagined? We are swifts, so named
because we travel at such speeds we’ve been pared
down to meet only the needs of motion. In the dusk,
we dine on drifts
of aerial plankton. We’re equipped to go

so long without a roost, our legs and feet have
dwindled to an afterthought. Perhaps it’s an
adaptive impulse, then, that makes us feel this
rash, unbidden urge to beat a group retreat. The
light shifts, and it fakes
us out. And there is silence then, a lapse

in vocalizing that is still a sort of subtle speech. It is as
if we’ve all had the same thought at once. At once, the
chatter ceases. A rush of panic. And we scatter and
reconvene elsewhere without one call to set the spot.
Perhaps the sharp report

of silence never correlates with real peril. Call it
irrational, a rush to judgment. But admit you’ve
felt it too: words dying in your throat, a sudden
hush, a silent dread. We sense, and we construe
collectively. We are the things we feel.

Previously published in Poetry Northwest. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2013 and won Poetry Northwest’s Carolyn Kizer Award. Forthcoming in author’s collection, Romance Language (Measure Press).

© Amy Glynn

Chamise

by Amy Glynn

From Canary Spring 2019

There is no wind. The chaparral has gone
to decadence. And the sun, at such a height,
leaves the sky desiccated, bleached ash-white.
A concentrated brightness, an indrawn

gathering of the light, as if the whole
world were enclosed within a camera
obscura, an inverted replica
universe cynosured through a pinhole.

Even the soil is aching from the heat;
a cracking bed of serpentine where few
species contrive to grow, and those that do
sustain themselves on nothing but complete

famine and drought. More than sustain: they flout
the whole system, responding to the mean
conditions with a kind of libertine
excess, oiling themselves elaborately, without

a care for consequence. Inviting fire.
Anointing their dry leaves with aromatic
resins just to inspire a dramatic
response. Spontaneous combustion. Dire

consequences, but they’ve thought of that
too, developing at once two kinds of seed:
one sprouts in wet soil. One is only freed
if the achene is scorched. This habitat

requires certain adaptations. And
rather than being meager in return
for meagerness, why not agree to burn?
Say there is nothing you cannot withstand.