On the 5th of May, the swifts come.

I know that at this very moment black swifts are racing across the sky.
About a dozen are heading for our street.
I listen to the silence high above my head,
I hear a tension, an incomplete picture waiting for its final touch.
I feel the anticipation as at the start of a symphony,
Expectation of the arrival of a familiar refrain.

And yet I know what is missing is actually a raucous screeching,
Like children coming out at break, absorbed in their own world.
With amazing aerobatics, and dog fights they will come,
Abandoned, and at easy, having crossed no-mans-land.

I know they will come, and I will be able to breath easily.

(Swifts arrived on the 9th May in Leicester.)