Swans, by Gaia Holmes

The days
are full of angles.
They strut
around the house
like vicious swans,
pecking
at piles of shoes
and clothes
and tangled thoughts,
hissing
at the disarray.

Smoothness
only comes
in the night
like a swallow
with the burr
and back-draft
of a wing,
with a memory,
with the swoop
of a hip-bone,
with the slow,
soft reel-show
of two cigarettes
thinning the gloom,
curing the darkness
with gold.