Poem for Friday and Tundra Swans

Swan
By Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air --
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

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My Thursday morning was uneventful -- various chores and reorganizing things -- then we had soup and sandwiches for lunch and a few more hours of work before we went to Cabin John Park, intending to walk, but it was raining hard enough that we mostly drove around to Pokestops instead. Dinner was vegan salmon cakes from Roots, which are great. 

Kristen and I watched some more of The Fellowship of the Ring before dinner, and around chat with my Thursday night group, Paul and I watched the end of season one of The White Lotus, which I'm still not sure I liked but at least I wasn't bored and the scenery was lovely. Here are the tundra swans spending the winter at Mason Neck: