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Leda, After the Swan


Perhaps,
in the exaggerated grace
of his weight
settling,


the wings
raised, held in
strike-or-embrace
position,


I recognized
something more
than swan, I can't say.


There was just
this barely defined
shoulder, whose feathers
came away in my hands,


and the bit of world
left beyond it, coming down


to the heat-crippled field,


ravens the precise color of
sorrow in good light, neither
black nor blue, like fallen
stitches upon it,


and the hour forever,
it seemed, half-stepping
its way elsewhere--


then
everything, I
remember, began
happening more quickly.

Written by Carl Phillips

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