Landing

Landing

Joanna Yonder - June 2025

The common swift
can stay aloft for ten months straight: eating and even sleeping on the wing.

Intrepid as this may be- and I admire this kind of lift-

I don’t aspire to tirelessness. Let me sometimes
come down
to rest.

I have to touch the earth. I’d like to be like puffins, down at the end of burrows carved with feet and beak, lined with clouds of down. I’d like to be a hawk settled in to spend the night
amid the fragrant boughs of spruces,
my back against the warm trunk of the tree.

This metaphor goes only so far, though-
unlike birds, who nest alone,
I’d like to have you there. Ensconced together. In the nest with all our friends and kin,

and incubating something. Maybe new beings
or ideas. Maybe sitting on a little fledgling revolution there, alongside each other,

Or perhaps just at rest. Creating warmth

between our bodies, pressed together.