The Swan At Edgewater Park - Ruth L. Schwartz

Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans

Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers,

condoms

          in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

          into the body of a Great Lake,

Swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,

While Clevelanders walk by saying Look

          at that big duck!

Beauty isn’t the point here; of course

          the swan is beautiful,

But not like Lorie at 16, when

Everything was possible—no

More like Lorie at 27

Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

Her kid with asthma watching TV,

The boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna

Leave him, washing his car out back—and

He’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

It’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

Really does, he loves them both—

That’s the kind of swan this is.