Mnemonic

On the last evening of September, the swifts,
in yearly migration,
circle a nearby smokestack in the thousands.

A romance foregrounded in the come-and-go,
in that instinctual, insect-full yearning to move,
be light with dark wings: After they drop down
for night, a hawk settles to wait for day.

At parties in our early twenties, palm reading
was an excuse to touch another hand,
gently tracing each direction before release
—desire not as organizing principle
but as wispy narration, a gnawed nail testing
a line; then, reconsidering,
to cast aside a spongy gin & tonic lime.

And the city was full of such spurious
& absorbing motion;
a good memory glancing off
an e-bike splash in the gig economy.

And I wanted to love them, but had no idea
how to hold—or sustain—a thing neither
necessarily brief nor necessarily forever.

In the parking lot, birds fade, unanimous jewels
into dwindling blue, so we turn
to the telescope to try & make out
first Venus, then Saturn,
then what we know of Saturn’s little moons.