Swifts and swallows

30. 28 June 2021

Swifts and swallows, where are you now?

Where have you gone? Are you dead?

Little fighter jets dodging and diving somehow…

You live dangerous lives migrating so far –

Are you dead of poison, got lost, eaten now?

Have you been shot down and killed?

Where are you all, little swifts and swallows?

We miss you bombing over the water;

Without you to stretch it, the sky is hollow,

Our eaves are silent, the evenings shorter.

An absence, a silence, has anyone seen?

Are there not enough insects to slaughter?

Is this it, is this goodbye forever?

Small businesslike birds in the blue?

I don’t want it to be true,

But I’m thinking that we will never again see the flight

Of the swifts and the swallows before night.

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Alternatively they might have gone back to Africa?

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