"I made shoes for everyone, even you,
 and still go barefoot."
                                   —Dylan

I
That planted field was nearly harvested
three years ago, when I stood
near St. Isadore, watching swallows
curve wind in slender wings,
when one, sliding the empty rows,
caught a wire fence with both wings
and spun to earth, where flights
twisted away from the onshore breeze.

II
In that month, a woman was married
in Calais: wasted the long       
mornings of watching, gone
the pebbled shoreline of this ancient sea
and the skimming of mouettes and terns.
Yet on that northern shoreline she remembered
dories arc-lighting empty swells
on her native southern coast.

III
And now a woman brings, in a box,
a hirondelle from her balcony:
small eyes blazing in darkness,
long flights intact, her legs
clutching my wrist
as if to harvest something
I’ve already lost.

IV
In a small room, smoking: Hamid,
small drops of water like crystals
hung from the twisted hair:
“Take two small stones, and place them 
into her grasping feet, then throw her
into the face of the rising wind:
for it is only the weight
we struggle against, only those stones
we hold closest to us
that let us fly.”

V
Allah, seeing his blessed city
surrounded, darkened the sky
with swallows. Each released
the tiny stones she held, destroying        
the army, and saving, perhaps,
that huge black cubic stone
that burns near the walls of Mecca.

VI
She comes to me now, at evening,
speaking of loss and of flight,
of the north winter shoreline encrusted    
with broken rocks and jetties;
speaking of what she could not see:
fishing boats and constellations
blown in the evening wind.

VII
Where could I find the tiny gems,
those sculptured pebbles of flame
she needs to grasp in her hands,
to wear on her fingers and never forget
the sunlight blazing on this foreign coast,
distant formations rising in sequence,
and arc lights that draw what fish remain
shining towards the surface
to be caught?

VIII
I carried her out to the terraced hillside
and placed the tiny stones I’d selected
into those grasping feet, then threw her
as Hamid said, into the rising wind.
Her wings caught life, they bore her
along sea cliffs, then out across the bay
towards Antibes.

IX
I stood there in silence, watching,
thinking of wind-polished wings,
of Venus rising from the seaward edge,
and of how I once swam towards a light
that blazed from a distant shore.