Elegy for the Las House Swallow

By David Anson Lee

The nest remained above the porch, 

a gray cup hardened to the beam.

Each spring, the birds crossed the threshold

with mud in their beaks, 

wings stitching the afternoon.

This year, nothing.

The woman who watched them

from the kitchen chair 

stopped opening the curtains.

Someone placed a ladder beneath the nest. 

Someone wrote REMOVE 

on a square of cardboard.

No one did.

Rain entered the cup. 

A wasp occupied it briefly.

By October, the mud had cracked.

When the house was sold, 

the porch was painted the color of bone.

They left the nest.

At dusk, a swallow crossed the yard, 

not returning, 

not ours, 

only passing through.

For one second 

the empty nest held the whole sky.

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David Anson Lee is a poet whose work explores memory, mortality, place, and the strange emotional lives of ordinary things. His poems have appeared in The Rush Magazine, Plainsongs, New Contrast, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and other literary journals. His debut chapbook, The Body Keeps Its Inventory in Shadow, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. He lives in Houston, Texas, where he writes and works in medicine.