A White Bird While Burning Trash
/Laura Neal
I think it may be a swan
standing yellow-
legged in our backyard pond.
At first, I wonder if I am inhaling too much smoke,
raking leaves into the flame,
but no, there it is, as soft and white as they are in film.
I stand, water hose in hand
trying not to move
though wanting to be closer.
It buffers its wings against its body.
Something breaks in the fire, loud and disturbing.
A moonshine bottle maybe.
An aerosol can.
The common explosion shocks me in this moment,
the swan flying away.
I go inside, tell everyone what I saw, but they don’t believe me. They say,
“there ain’t no swans down here”
“they don’t even fly this far south.”
Evening lowers,
I go back over the slope,
making sure the fire’s out,
and I see again the swan.
It returns. And soon after
another. This time, I keep moving
as if they were simple birds,
staring as I reel in the hose.
Author’s Note: I've been writing poetry for more than a decade and it all began in the swamp woods of South Carolina, swimming in the stories of my ancestors. In my work I strive to exploit the "everyday," the parts of life that sort of function like paper cuts. But my intention isn't a meditation on pain, rather a call for attention to things that go numb to us. I'm coming from a place that isn't trying to commodify but culminate a restorative narrative.
Laura Neal is an African-American poet from South Carolina greatly influenced by social and environmental narratives. She received her BA from Bowie State University and her MFA from the University of Maryland College Park. Her work is published in Academy of American Poets, Birmingham Poetry Review, Boston Art Review, FreeBlackSpace, Green Mountains Review, and Appalachian Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), CALLALOO (Providence, RI), Juniper Writing Institute (Amherst, MA), Hambidge Center for Creative Arts (Rabun Gap, GA) and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Upperville, VA). She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas.
