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Swifts

The race is not to the swift

The swift, most aerial of birds, known in Irish
as a wind fork, sleeps on the wing,
even mates in flight and never stops
flying from the time it leaves the nest
until it makes a nest of its own.

Body shaped like a fat cigar,
long wings crossed over tail feathers,
it plies the evening sky for food,
chattering loudly as it dips
and whirls above our heads.

Swifts used hollow trees for cozy nests
and roosts until the old forests
were cut down to make masts
for sailing ships, for captains’ houses,
for who knows what ephemeral human ends.

For a while swifts built their nests
of woven twigs in narrow chimneys
that protected them from harm.
But now that chimneys have fallen
out of favor, they have joined
the ranks of the homeless under bridges
and in doorways throughout
our injudicious world.

Yet in a Gothic cathedral in Somerset,
high in the belfry of the Northwest tower,
heavenly wisdom ordained creation
of handmade wooden boxes that invite
the birds to rest and take up residence,
to lay their eggs and raise their young,
joining the pigeons that canoodle
constantly atop the gabled niches
and the haloed statues of the saints.

I like to think of gusts of swifts
flying out on a summer evening
over the green to the Bishop’s Palace
with its flowing wells and springs,
along the swan-thronged moat,
then returning like pilgrims to rest
among the wingéd effigies of angels,
their so clearly kindred spirits.

by Angela Patten © Ley Lines Literary Review, Issue 2, 2026