Josh Kryah

BLACK SWANS

I could say many things, and all these things could be 
variations on nothing.  Like how I’ve glimpsed the woodgrain
swirling in my father’s forearms, and seen his past splinter off
into a pile of shavings, his children buried underneath. 
Or like the two black swans I saw yesterday, whose bodies formed
the impalpable shadow of the dead poet Larry Levis, all his words
decorated in black feathers and trailing off in the rings they left
behind them.  I could say that those swans were like the lungs
of my father, blackened and beautiful, with the way he held
a cigarette while taking a break from the workbench,
flicking ash onto the cool concrete floor, his love smoldering
in a condensation of smoke and booze and wood.  Like the swans
who looked as though they had been swept down a chimney.
But they hadn’t.  Black tulips remind you of the colors they are lacking,
so intent are they in their unprimed existence.  But like
the black swans, and like my father, they conjure up all
that’s lost in the similarity of things.  Like the emptiness reached
in harmony, where no one sound defeats the other.  Gone,
but for the sake of melting into some resemblance of pleasing.