Cirrus and alto clouds, south-west wind.
The lake is at 1.59 metres—still higher 
than the highest point of 2024’s winter.

At the gazebo I’m watching the water fall,
and the grasses rise.
The swans and ducks and coots are out
off the edges towards 
the centre of the lake again.

There’s one swan—most likely the bachelor
who spent much of springtime on a small
dry spot of land near the gazebo’s bridge.
He’s rocking from side to side on the water, 
the way swans sometimes do when they’re churning things
up below; then he gets his neck down there
and pulls up whatever it is he’s after.

Today there are quite a few boodoo-bluebills
around. One or two (likely mother and young)
are hanging around the bachelor swan
the way coots sometimes do,
feeding on what he leaves behind.
But I’ve never seen boodoo do
this before, diving down into the churned-up
lakebed and grass (where coots wait
only on the surface).

Meanwhile, some other swans are fighting
for territory slightly further east,
wings flapping, necks rolling up and down,
making high-pitched appeals to the sky.

Back with the boodoo, a new one has come in,
but he’s quickly shooed off by the first one.
The feeding swan, however, carries on regardless.

And I’m thinking, sometimes love for the world,
after a point, can carry over, or turn inside out,
and become love of the world—world’s love.

This lasts for a while.

A raptor flies over, small and brown, likely a kestrel.
And the only ones who seem to really notice
are the kanamit welcome swallows,
and maybe a crow or two where he flies byon the eastern side.
Love of the world, close by.

***

And then an adolescent swan, in the growing-dryer spot
the bachelor had previously occupied,
suddenly takes off, black with still some grey, in a flurry
and flapping of wings towards the east,
while its siblings move slowly off the bank further down,
and a group of black-winged stilts flap northward,
as the crunching of the neghbouring school’s
ride-on lawnmower grinds on by.