Cygnet Rising-Lee Uhen
Cygnet Rising
By Lee Uhen
I couldn’t sleep for the sirens that failed to sound,
neither disturbing his slumber nor alerting me
to his calamity. I could smell his corpse by 2 a.m.
His left calf was wriggling, a breeding ground for
bottom-feeders that had come up for air. The entire
lake was a wake for him, geese the only attendees
save a single graceless cygnet circling the moon.
All along the shore conspiratorial tones dripped
from the lips of petals—a nepenthe that weighted
the limbs of every tree, that seared the veins
of every leaf fluttering through our city to share
drunken tales with street lamps that soon became
drowsy and dull. And there was a knock on the door.
There was suddenly ticking. Everywhere ticking
and discord lifting from his spine and Vulcan beating
his tympanis and irises of tin and watch gears
and it occurred to me that he had always been this
clockwork, this machination. And on the lawn
was the same cygnet from the lake, awkward but
dancing, metamorphosing to the steady stops
and starts of his heart. And when the cygnet’s wings
had blossomed he gnawed them off, fixed them
to his shoulders like dumb tongues, vanished,
leaving the swan with nothing but the song: who
was that youth seducing me? A fantasy, a tyrant,
a phantom reconstructing his trysts with the junior
quarterback, the knowledge that it hurts more
when no one tells you the love affair is over.
Copyright C. 2008 Lee Uhen