for Avril

I never saw the swans
although shadows crossed
the water and clouds
stretched long necks
over grassy acres.
Every year, she told me,
of the thirty her family owned
this land with its spring-fed pond,
the trumpeters arrived
at one edge of winter.

Like most patients, she asked
How long do I have?
meaning, is there any time left
for one more migration?
Cancer denying clairvoyance,
I nursed what truth I knew.

My task was to listen: to the pulse,
to the breath, to whatever symptom
spoke loudest in the body, hers, nausea.
I smoothed comforting cream
over her thin blue wrist
while asking about swans’ voices.

Coo-hoo, she whispered,
Coo-hoo, softer than geese.

And she described how sometimes
only five or six appeared.
Once twenty-seven.
How their down shone white
the way rain makes peace with snow.

I never saw the swans.
Yet in those final hours
I watched her eyelids flutter
over the blue beneath, vision
for the living of what the dying
see: great forms descending
as shadows turn to light.