Poetry by Heather Swan

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Kermit 
                  Because I'm not giving up...
                                 -Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie

That morning, when you returned
from your tunnel of darkness, 
the grasses of the marsh still brown 
in early spring, the air 
remembering the dead 
of winter but offering 
a promise of green, 
a flicker of movement 
pulled you from your hood 
of despair, off the trail 
and into the mud, 
following the instinct you had
as a boy, something stronger
than the undertow, at last, 
and your arm shot down 
into the muck. You emerged
from the damp reeds cupping a tiny
frog, and I saw in your eyes
that spark, a gleam, inchoate, 
as you stood again in your church 
of cattails, and I believed then
you would survive. 

​




Field Notes: Cedar Waxwing

The weight of his limp 
feathered body in my palm
was less than that of a lemon.
Still warm, his heart 
wildly beating, a bird
who believed the blue
of the shop window 
to be more open sky.

I know the way what 
looks to be a clear path
is often only an illusion.
Why is it we only begin 
to connect when we 
are truly broken? 

Inside, he soon
stood, clutched my finger,
ate what I offered 
out of my hand, my heart, 
and within days, flew 
out of my life. 

​




Then 
               I wake to sleep and take my waking slow...
                                               -Theodore Roethke 


Pressing against 
                  this unknown,

this unknowing,
                  I am a fallen leaf

against the wall of soil.
                  Only by softening 

will I enter.
                 See how the light

pours through
                  the leafless trees? 

Only by dissolving 
                  this mask 

of separation,
                  by becoming 

porous enough
                  can we 

begin to fill, 
                  to belong.

Like the hollows
                 of the tree filling 

with moss, with fungi,
                  with breeze.

​

​
Heather Swan's poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain. She is the author of the poetry collection A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and the chapbook The Edge of Damage ( Parallel Press), which won the Wisconsin Chapbook Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing in Madison.