Elizabeth Smither: The man in the hammock and The swan neck

The swan neck

The doctor placed his fingertips together to make

a steeple near his stethoscope and blotter.

“Your daughter has a swan neck,” he declared.

My father had discovered as I stretched

my soon-to-be-named neck

an apparent lump rising against the flesh.

Probably nothing, he thought, but he eyed it

for several mornings while I ate my porridge.

Better have it seen to, for safety’s sake.

I made it worse by stretching up my neck

like a real swan. It was a school morning

and I hadn’t done my homework.

“Do you mind if I touch it?” my father said.

It seemed there was a lump. But the doctor

said it was a sign of beauty.

In ballet class I pressed my shoulders down

and my neck was freed to rise.

Really it was to ape stillness

while the swan feet moved beneath.

The head of a ballerina must be poised.

I thought of this while the very clean fingers

of the doctor probed and the lump retreated.

“Swan neck,” my father glowed. Beauty

promised, an unasked for gift.

He took me to an ice cream parlour

then hurried home to tell my mother

of a swan in the family. “Some way to go,”

my mother said. More neck might be required

but my father’s kiss that night was sweet.

He called me “swan” instead of “pet”.

For weeks after he looked at my neck

which, for love, I was obliged to stretch

to be a white swan on the Thames.

Elizabeth Smither

The man in the hammock

My neighbour has strung a hammock

between the posts of her veranda

and in it, near midnight, a head arises.

My friend, pulling her car into the driveway

points out a shining forehead on which

light from the full moon is pouring.

“Look, someone’s there.” Two eyes in shadow

an astonishment at another interruption to the night

in which he was meant to be rolled

in darkness, sky community, if he wakes,

the stars like the hands of a watch

and the moon, his own forehead, sailing.

But the lawn is so small, a single rose

is blooming in garden strip, pink

as a blushing cheek. “Goodnight,” I call

to my friend as she backs away. The gravel

crunches under the tyres, the face falls back.

Sleep, sleep, I want to call. He will not hear

my steps on the shining grass, the daisies

I try to avoid, then the white path.

Sleep well, foreheads, man and moon.

Elizabeth Smither