Sometimes I wonder where swans go to die
Or what they do when the good weather’s gone
I guess they fly south, but I never see’em fly

I’m right by a lake watching three swanlings try
Almost summer and the sun’s goin strong
You ever wonder where swans go to die?

When big fish jump, are they chasin the sky—
Or just tired of swimming all day long?
They wanna fly south but don’t know how to fly

I go to the mirror, and there’s this old guy
Guess he’s sorta been there all along
You ever wonder where you’ll go to die?

Hard to admit you forgot how to cry
And on top’a that you been shelled like a prawn
You’d fly away but don’ know how to fly

Hard to ignore that big fear stoppin by
Just try to picture first light on a fawn
And don’t ever wonder where swans go to die

Wish I could run like the hummingbirds fly
Oz tol’ me I coulda been home all along
Might get there Monday if I get me a ride

I go to the store but don’t know what to buy
Why not give up and go sleep on the lawn?

Sometimes I wonder where swans go to die
Prolly go south, but they walk—they don’t fly.

A few hours ago, a man
some call mentally
challenged told me
about his pulled tooth.

“Still hurts bad,”
he said.  People walked by,
their shadows cursive
in the late sun.    

This man—white,
maybe forty—spoke
as though he knew me,
knew I would know
a way to stop the pain.

I’d seen him around—
unsure in the crosswalk,
sipping free cocoa
at the coffee shop—
said hello a couple times.

His eyes held that
first ache, that hope
we hold before time
hardens our faces  

and I understood
for a moment—my life
and his: what it means

to suffer quietly on Earth,
confused by the way
things are—having

no idea really,
what to do    
or who to ask.

they say,
the poem still believes it
can be loved,
despite all its unkempt days,
the talking out of turn

and not going to church, despite
railing around wild-eyed
like a madman with news
of a Martian invasion. The poem insists

that its recalcitrance, its bad-girl
panache, its misgivings about
the “free market”
might be understood

as a kind of spiritual incandescence—
a sort of alarmist,
post-pubescent awakening—
that turns the world

into a bruised thumb
plugging a hole in the sky.
The poem is done with speed-dating,
nervous hugs, dancing at clubs
with its confident but mispronounced

sexual edge: it just wants
what it wants which is
to be wanted

without the cautiously probing,
faux-casual conversations
about its accents: the affectionate

anxiety about its hair texture
and “cultural background”.

Uh-huh, yeah,  
the poem thinks, shyly
looking a little to the left—
but do you love me
for me