Watching Swallows in Jane's Garden 

I wrote this poem some months after my return from Turkey two years ago - I had spent a month in a small village house in Karabortlen - I would often walk past olive and orange groves, along the old Ulla Road, to see Jane and Ken - within their garden, I would always be happy and calm - 

I loved watching the swallows sip water from the pool - the warm wind would blow through the pines - later, a bright yellow moon would rise over the mountains - 

Deo volente - in a few days time I'll be there again - returning for a CT scan and colonoscopy in England a few weeks later -

During such times, the beauty of the world is overwhelming - but its fragility and transience is very obvious  to me -

I will start, as I did before, to compartmentalise time -

Jane tells me the swallows come every year -
They fly over the sea to this valley in the mountains -
Dark crescents in the late summer sky,
Falling through the shining air -

Their wings touch the sand in Africa,
Glow with the light of falling stars -

They are dusted with yellow pine pollen,
Resin scents their feathers -

Jane shows me their nests -
Neat shells of dried mud, in a ribbon of shadow -

I see the blue sky over the terracotta roof tiles -
Small lizards steal up the whitewashed walls -

The marble terrace gives way to the still garden -
A tortoise rests beneath  orange trees,
Bright geranium flowers brush against my skin -

The sun burns the back of my neck -
I can smell squashed figs, taste their sweet juices -

In the midday heat, I feel like a figure in a Greek frieze -
Ageless and clean, scoured by the sunlight -

But I remember the panic I felt,
Half way up the mountain, in the firebreak -
Cypress trees like dark torches in the valley,
The white stones burning in the river bed -

I thought I'd see, any moment,
The invisible creatures sleeping in the shade of the lichened rocks -

I thought they would wake, sleek and shapely,
That they would tear me to pieces -

Later that day, just before sunset,
When the cliffs were coloured red,
The swallows dived down from the falling sun -
Dancing in the air -

I stood in the pool, the water up to my neck -
I raised my head to see the swallows -
Dark crescents in the sky,
Swooping down to the garden -

My heart opened when I saw them fly -
Circling the pool, avoiding the red dragonflies,
Artless and beautiful -

Scooping up the water in their opened beaks,
Flying almost up to me, then swerving away just in time -
Flying up to the sky in the darkening air -

My fears and secrets blew away -
My dark clothes were heaped by the side of the pool -

I knew I could fly away with those sweet spirits if I wished to -
Up into their magical sky, beyond the moon -