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Writer's pictureErin Brown

POETRY | Swan Song


It resonates. This moment between moments, when our compulsion to be is not comprised of wishes that we were other than we are. A moment when – however briefly – we are all that we can be. Life, reality: These things can do no more to us in that moment Than reach heavenward - their determined, stumbling hands twinkling with uncertainty - and try, foolishly, to encase us between their grubby fingertips. Pretending as though somehow we these newly-freed birds of the air are not so bright against the greying, lavender sky of this life as we know ourselves to be. In this moment - however brief our efforts at perfection; however short our time - this, our last second as what we are for now remains as true as the north wind, tumbling across the earth. A certainty for an uncertain world. Such is this wildness, this last aria of life. For a heartbeat, it will bank: a hard right that leaves those behind, breathless daunted, hearts gaping; emotions without name flowing like a thousand rivers. But such is the height of our final note;

Such is the price of our song. Whether we die in ditches,

Or wrapped in the useless threads of luxury we must, each of us, leave behind. Truly, this life will dive away from us all at some point. Like a bird that seeks a fish beneath the sea of all it is to be human: changing, unpredictable beautiful but dark as sharks that have forgotten how to hunt but not how to lunge. At some point, we will all make our own tumblings into eternity and the consequences of the lives we chose. What then? What shall be our echo? Our refrain to be cast to the stars: Shall it be hollow? Shall our song be just as the lies we speak to each other, to ourselves, as we stand generation to generation before the bathroom vanities of our kind? No. Let our song be as that of one who has passed by only in body. Who says Though I existed, I also have lived. Though I was broken, so in being scarred, I am healed. Though now I am dust, once I had a moment. Fierce as the sun. And it was mine.

© Erin Brown 2012-2014

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