Sometimes the skies
do not open for weeks.
They sulk,
petulant and brooding.
Below, in the vast swirling delta of dust,
the skin cracks, contorts,
dry as a pumice rock.

The swifts have arrived
startling the air
like fire-crackers.
Or the weird pulses of electro-static
that scientists say
can appear as a sudden eruption
from absolute nothing
defiantly searing the vacuum.

But though it seems
they might live off motums
of light and dust
for decades, without thirsting,
the swifts are dying.
Their ragged bodies wither back
into the ether
one by one.

It’s the purest truth, that fire and water
cannot mix.
But still, we carry on, 
as though it were a matter
of taste, or a pleasing myth.
A twisted tale we tell in the half-light
to wide-eyed children, thirsting
for a shiver of fear.

But the birds return each spring
in smaller streams.
Smokestacks pierce the membrane of the sky
and pavements bake, windows heave, 
voices shrivel and die.
Dust drives us home, choking the light.
And how we wish
we had slowed down, turned back, 
before the swifts took flight.